[adelie]

like the author, i burned out on the extracurricular grind necessary to get into an elite college and as a result, spent most of my university years severely depressed.

for me, it was debate club. i liked debate, but the form of it i participated in was a rich man's game and i was simply not a rich man. i didn't have the money to fly to the east coast every weekend to attend tournaments or pay people to assemble cases and evidence briefs for me. it wasn't worth the coaches' time to even listen to me practice because i wasn't wealthy enough to compete at a high level.

that feeling of futility persisted across other extracurriculars. i participated in the science fair, but my advisor instantly became dismissive when it became clear that my parents couldn't gift me a competitive research opportunity at their lab or hospital because they, y'know, didn't work at a lab or hospital. the school i went to had a lot of rich kids; i once spotted one of my classmates at the airport on their way to volunteer in uganda over the summer.

math team ended up my saving grace. perhaps it's because we weren't quite so competitive - we did well regionally but were not competitive at a state or national level - but there was something freeing in just solving math problems. afterschool math practice was free and open to everyone. there were a variety of different competitions, team and individual, geared for different skill levels and specializations. no one cared about what my parents did for a living, thank god. it was just about solving the damn math problem.

[lupire]

Math is the cheapest extracurriculal. It's the best!