Rivals in Struggle

Finding your academic rival having a full-blown breakdown in the library is a weird experience.

This guy, Adrian, and I have been competing for top marks since forever.

I find him late one night at Oxford, looking like a ghost, totally exhausted. He snaps at me,

thinking I'm there to gloat. But then he just breaks. He confesses his

dad is destroying him over his grades, that he can't keep up with the pressure. And suddenly,

he wasn't my rival. He was just a guy struggling with the same parental pressure I knew.

We sat on the floor and just talked. For the first time, we were okay.