In my first year of university I was working a part time job, tutoring students on the side, and commuting three hours every single day.
People thought I was crazy. Some days I agreed with them.
But at the end of that year I had a 3.98 GPA and a full merit scholarship. And for one brief moment, it felt like the math had worked out in my favour.
What I thought I had figured out
I hadn't figured anything out. I had just survived - barely - and confused surviving with having a system.
Still, the results were real. So I doubled down.
I left the tutoring. Joined the startup full time. Told myself that now, with one less thing on my plate, the grades would only get easier to maintain.
Second year began with that quiet confidence.
It didn't last.
The number that changed everything
Full time job. Full time degree. Three hours on buses every single day.
I gave second year everything I had. There were nights I studied past midnight after a full day of work. Mornings I reviewed notes on the commute because that was the only quiet time I had. Weekends that weren't really weekends.
At the end of second year I checked my GPA.
3.88.
I needed 3.90 to keep the scholarship.
I missed it by .02.
What .02 feels like
Not a lot of people talk about this specific kind of loss.
It's not the loss of someone who didn't try. It's not the loss of someone who made a peaceful tradeoff. It's the loss of someone who gave everything they had and came up just short anyway.
.02 is close enough to feel cruel.
And when the sting settled in, my brain did what brains do. It went looking for someone to blame.
Was the job affecting my focus? Was I not studying hard enough? Did I slack off somewhere without noticing? Was I overconfident - so sure I'd make it that I stopped fighting for it?
I still don't have clean answers. Maybe all of it was true a little. Maybe none of it was. Maybe .02 was just .02 and some margins are too thin to reliably control.
That uncertainty is the hardest part to sit with.
I got the Dean's List. Which should have felt like something. And it did - just not the thing I was reaching for.
I started third year carrying that.
Third year
I didn't quit. I didn't slow down. I went back to work the next day and the day after that.
Full time job. Full time studies. Same commute. Same grind. Just without the merit scholarship and with a new, quieter kind of pressure sitting somewhere behind everything.
By the end of third year my CGPA sat at 3.86. Dean's List again.
And I had a decision to make.
The month I was supposed to get promoted
The promotion had been coming for a while. I knew it. My managers knew it.
I quit that month.
Not because the job was bad. Not because the people weren't good to me. I quit because I had spent three years giving my degree only a fraction of my full attention and I needed to know - at least once - what I was capable of when I gave something everything.
I had already lost the scholarship by .02. I wasn't willing to finish my degree the same way. Wondering. Always wondering what the number might have been.
So I walked away from the raise. From the promotion. From the routine I had built my life around for three years.
And I started my final year.
What I know now
I don't have a tidy conclusion about whether it was all worth it.
What I have is this: three years of doing the hard thing built something in me that a clean, comfortable degree never would have. I know what it feels like to be exhausted and show up anyway. I know what it feels like to miss something important by the thinnest possible margin and keep going. I know what it feels like to walk away from money because you believe something else matters more right now.
None of that shows up on a transcript.
But it's the most real thing I own.
If you're in the middle of something like this
Maybe you're carrying more than anyone around you knows. Maybe you've missed something important by a margin that felt unfair. Maybe you're wondering if the sacrifice is adding up to anything.
I can't promise it is. I'm still finding out myself.
But I know that showing up - fully, repeatedly, even when the numbers don't cooperate - changes you in ways that matter long after the grades stop being relevant.
The .02 still stings a little if I'm honest.
But I'm starting my final year with clear eyes and no distractions for the first time in four years.
That feels like something worth writing about.
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