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30-year-old Harvard MBA says ‘I’m genuinely dumb’, reflects on her failures
Grace Lee, a Harvard MBA graduate, shares her 'museum of failures' on Instagram, revealing struggles with ADHD, health, and the pressures of success.
Grace Lee, a 30-year-old Harvard Business School graduate from the Class of 2025, has struck a chord online after sharing a deeply personal Instagram post detailing what she calls her “museum of failures”.
In a candid Instagram post that quickly resonated with professionals and students alike, Lee reflected on feeling inadequate despite elite credentials, living with undiagnosed ADHD, shutting down a startup after years of effort, and struggling with health and perfectionism. The post’s on-screen caption read: “My museum of failures as a 30-year-old Harvard MBA.”
Rather than framing her experiences as regrets, Lee said they shaped who she is — and helped her understand why many high-achieving people feel stuck even when their lives look successful on paper.
‘I am genuinely dumb’
Lee began by recalling her time at JP Morgan, where she said she constantly felt behind her peers despite working harder than everyone else. According to her LinkedIn profile, she spent two years working as an analyst at JP Morgan in New York City. This was a position she held between 2017 and 2019 — a couple of years before she began her MBA at Harvard.
“I am genuinely dumb,” Lee wrote in her Instagram post, adding that it took her “3x longer than everyone else to understand basic concepts”.
In one presentation, she said she told her team she would “just say our names” because she did not trust herself to handle the actual content. While she compensated by putting in extra hours, the feeling of barely keeping up never left.
Discovering ADHD at 30
A major turning point, Lee said, came when she was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 30 — something she believes went unnoticed for decades because of overcompensation.
“Took me 30 years to realise I have ADHD,” she wrote. “Spent decades thinking I was just lazy and undisciplined.”
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She explained that straight A’s, leadership roles and never being late masked her symptoms, noting that “perfectionism and anxiety can mask ADHD very well”. Now, she says she is focused on turning the “100 ideas racing through my head” into a strength rather than a liability.
A startup that didn’t survive
Lee also reflected on the physical and emotional toll of building a startup during her time at Harvard. She said she spent $200,000 on the venture, grew it to 1,000 users, and even pitched it to Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary — but ultimately shut it down.
“I averaged 3 hours of sleep and woke up covered in stress rashes,” she wrote. “My body was screaming stop. I kept going.”
The experience, she suggested, taught her hard limits about hustle culture and ignoring physical warning signs.
Health struggles and anxiety
Despite being a former athlete, Lee said she has struggled with her health for years, including yo-yoing 40 pounds since college. Knee problems made exercise harder, creating what she described as a vicious cycle.
Lee also addressed her struggle with putting herself out publicly. Although she has recorded more than 50 videos, she said she has only posted around 20.
“The rest sit in my camera roll because I convince myself they’re not good enough,” she wrote, adding that she often spends hours on content only to delete it. She said she nearly didn’t post the viral message at all.
Lee ended by saying she plans to share both what she has learned and what she is still figuring out, hoping others can “skip some of the s**t I went through”.
