It’s 7:30 in the morning. You should be fast asleep in your warm bed, but instead you’re slumped over in a chair, elbows resting on the desk, eyes struggling to stay open as your teacher begins the day with a lecture on the different components of a cell.

You meant to get more sleep, but it was a pretty packed afternoon. After school you had to go make up a quiz; then you went straight to soccer practice. After your school team practice, you had to drive 45 minutes to get to your club team’s facilities; you have practice for another hour and a half. By the time you get home at 9:30, you’re exhausted, and yet, you’re night hasn’t even really started. You’ve got to read and take notes on 50 pages for AP World History, after which you’ve got a worksheet for Physics, and 20 problems to complete for Pre-Calculus. Not to mention taking a shower, and getting something for dinner.

So when your classmate tells you he spent his evening watching a few reruns of Full House, and then fell asleep at 9, you can’t help but feel a little indignant: Nobody understands what I deal with! Nobody else has any excuses!

We’ve all fallen into the trap of comparing ourselves to others, whether on the basis of appearance, intelligence, talent, or just about any other quality. And in a high school world dominated by the looming presence of college applications, resume building has led to a new category of comparison: scheduling.

The fact is, everyone has a lot going on in their lives. Even if your friend doesn’t play on three sports teams, or participate in six different clubs, they are still dealing with a lot. School takes a lot of time and energy, even if you’re not balancing the coursework of five AP classes. Even just being a teenager is taxing; it’s unfair to claim that you’re life is harder or more complex than anyone else’s. Everyone deals with complexities and difficulties; everyone has a lot going on.

Maybe you have more things to put on your resume, but that doesn’t give you the right to downplay other people’s struggles or lifestyles.

I’ll be the first to admit that by lecturing on this habit I am being hypocritical: I’ve certainly compared myself to others plenty of times, and continue to do so on occasion, despite my efforts not to. It’s difficult not to judge ourselves based off of our peers.

But I encourage all of my fellow Patriots to recognize that we are all individuals, with different experiences, lives, and situations—therefore, any comparisons cannot truly be merited. We all have our difficulties and struggles and they are all real and valid.

So, who’s the busiest, or prettiest, or smartest of us all?

Stop asking–it doesn’t matter.