Seeing everyone's impressive results in O and A Levels earlier this week, I realised that fruits of hard labour were, in fact, a real thing. Although it's only customary to hustle before your exams, we often compromise our health to get the results we want.

Hustle culture started getting called in 2021, when more and more people started realising that maybe their "grind" wasn't directly proportional to the outcomes. The same applied to other typical "success indicators". With growing criticism of personalities such as Musk, Buffett, and Zuckerberg, people started to unveil the secret to things, like wealth and success. We found out that most of them were either born into wealth, accumulated it from shares, or determinedly fought taxes to retain wealth.

It's not that we were blind to this information, we were just used to a different narrative. The narrative that "merit begets money".

I grew up with the idea of a twisted version of how the world works, unaware of the loopholes in the system that catapults the fortunate into positions of power and wealth, whilst hindering the growth of the less privileged.

The asymmetry between effort and results is hard to accept. When highlighted, it can act as an active deterrent to your work ethic. This is extremely prevalent in the context of academia, where students who burn the midnight candle end up getting marginally less marks than those who are naturally talented.

The difference may be negligible, but the unfairness of the natural order of things certainly isn't. People tend to overwork themselves, and often face burnout because there's always a deadline to catch, always a higher wall to climb. What we don't realise, however, is that we're chasing an unattainable standard.

As a result, there has been a recent influx of infographics, articles, and video essays circulating on the internet criticising "the grind". With remarks about how it leads to burnout and complications to your mental health, people are slowly unlearning their usual instinct to glorify hustle culture.

It's easy to get fatigued by the idea of the disproportionality of hard work and success, and it may even discourage you from the idea of working hard to get what you want. The unfairness acts as an active deterrent and a catalyst for demotivation. However, it's important to remember that raw talent and privilege can only act as a boost for your success, giving you a head start.

In competitive environments, no matter how level the playing field is, the hours you put will never go to waste. The key here is balance – making sure you are not romanticising burnout but also putting in effort to achieve the results you want.

Koushin Unber is afraid that she might be peaking at eighteen and it's all downhill from here. Send obscure film theories to her at koushinunber27@gmail.com