What Burnout in University Taught Me About Success

Ashley Elliott
3 days ago
3 min read

The Version of Me Back Then

When I was back in university, I was definitely a different version of myself than the one who shows up today. In second year, I remember getting only about six hours of sleep. Personally, I don’t know how I did it back then. On average, I would:

Go to bed at 2 a.m.
Awake around 8 a.m.

And what was I even doing with my time if I was only getting around six hours of sleep?

Studying. Working on assignments. Preparing for exams. I remember that regularly getting six hours of sleep did have an impact on me and how I felt. I felt like a hollowed-out shell of myself at the time. It often seemed like all I did was work. Studying for exams, working on assignments, and doing homework took up most of my time. By the end of second year, it didn’t feel sustainable anymore.

Slowly Reclaiming Rest

In third year, I decided to get around seven hours of sleep. Going from six to seven hours of sleep had very little impact on my grades, but it definitely made a difference in how I felt day to day.

After graduating from university, I made another conscious decision to increase the number of hours I slept. So I decided to aim for eight hours of sleep, and that made a difference too. I felt:

Better rested
More grounded
Balance was returning to my life between work and rest

I felt like I was finally starting to recover from the burnout I had experienced during my undergrad.

What Meritocracy Doesn't Teach Us

Meritocracy teaches us that if we work hard enough, we will be rewarded. It suggests that our success is our responsibility alone and is determined by how much we do or how hard we work.

But meritocracy leaves out half the picture.

Meritocracy ignores that many of the most important drivers of meaningful success for us come from:

Relational support
Emotional clarity
Receptivity

It assumes that our achievement is purely effort-based.

In a meritocratic culture, receptivity is often labeled as:

Passive
Lazy
Unproductive

This causes us to rely on force instead of alignment, leading many of us toward:

Burnout
Chronic dissatisfaction
Misdirected effort

The Power of Receptivity

Receptivity—allowing, listening inward, and feeling for what is right—is essential for helping us:

Recognize aligned goals
Notice opportunities
Connect deeply with others
Make emotionally intelligent choices

Furthermore, meritocracy disconnects people from desire, which is the fuel behind meaningful achievement. Receptivity is what allows us to feel desire: what lights us up, what feels alive, what we long to create, and which direction feels true. Without a connection to desire, our achievement becomes performative, externally driven, based on proving and pleasing. Which leads to “achieving” but not fulfillment. Yet we succeed through emotion, intuition, connection, creativity, timing, support, and receptivity — qualities meritocracy does not know how to acknowledge or value. This leaves many of us feeling like we are doing everything right but still not fulfilled. We end up following a model that overlooks half of what truly creates success.

The Lesson I Carry Forward

Reflecting on my time in university, I have learned many lessons since then. I learned to honour the natural rhythms of my body and to pay attention to its signals of fatigue.

One of the most important lessons has been recognizing:

When success and achievement feel meaningful and when they do not, and understanding how meritocracy influences that

When I was in my second year of university, I was exhausted and felt like a hollowed-out version of myself. The biggest lesson from that time was to reconnect with my desire and to connect with myself more deeply.

It reminded me that no success is worth feeling hollow.

If This Resonates...

If this reflection resonates with you, or if it reminds you of someone you care about, I invite you to share it with them. Sometimes, one honest story is all it takes to help someone feel seen or reconnect with what truly matters.