I Threw Hot Dogs Until I Broke

It was 3AM in my dorm kitchen and I was throwing frozen hot dogs across the floor to calculate pi. Not because I had to. Because I thought it would make me feel something again. I'd been measuring everything for months—GPA, percentiles, hours studied. Laying down masking tape in perfect parallel lines like I was mapping out my entire future. Every throw had to count. Every calculation had to be precise. 300 tosses. 191 crosses. 300 divided by 191 divided by 2. The number came out close to pi, just like the textbook promised. But I felt absolutely nothing. I sat on that sticky kitchen floor at 4AM, surrounded by scattered hot dogs, finally understanding that all my mathematical precision couldn't solve the one equation that mattered: how to want things again. The experiment worked perfectly. I was completely broken. #AcademicBurnout #STEMStruggles #PerfectionismHurts #Education