Jeremy Lin opens up about pressures of academic success in high school

Before Jeremy Lin was an international basketball star, he was a high school kid with high expectations for himself who felt the pressures of academic success. Sounds like any other teen or 20-something in America, right?

In a Facebook post last week, the Hornets guard and Harvard graduate reflected on his time in high school after reading a story in The Atlantic magazine titled "The Silicon Valley Suicides," which examined the increasing number of suicides in the affluent northern California community. Lin attended Palto Alto High School, on which the story was based.

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Lin said he dealt with suicide during his time in California. 

"When I was a freshman at Palo Alto High, a classmate who sat next to me committed suicide," Lin wrote in his post. "I remember having difficulty registering what had happened. A year later, a friend committed suicide. I saw up close the pain and devastation of their loved ones and in my community. I realized then that there are so many burdens we don’t see the people around us carrying. I told myself that I would try to be more sensitive and open to other people's struggles."

The 27-year-old Lin gave some insight to his own struggles as a high schooler. 

"My daily thought process was that every homework assignment, every project, every test could be the difference," he wrote. "The difference between a great college and a mediocre college. The difference between success and failure. The difference between happiness and misery."

Lin wound up in Cambridge, Mass., where he became a star before joining the NBA. He said basketball was his break from the grind of academia. 

"I remember not being able to sleep well on Sunday nights, waking up covered in sweat from nightmares that I had just failed a test. I dreaded Sundays because it meant I just finished my weekend basketball tournament — my precious outlet from academics — and now faced a whole week of immense pressure at school.

"I felt the pressure coming from all around me — my parents, my peers and worst of all, myself. I felt that I had one shot at high school and that my GPA, SAT score and college applications were the only barometers of my success."

He closed with words of encouragement for Palo Alto. 

"I don’t have any great insight and I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be a high school student today," Lin wrote. "I do know that I’m proud to be from Palo Alto, a resilient community that I see striving to learn how to better support and care for each other."