Being the first in your family to do something isn’t easy. You’re building a road while walking on it.

When nobody at home has done this, there is no one to ask the small questions, and the small questions are what slow you down: which form, which office, what that word means. You are doing the task and writing the directions at the same time, which is genuinely twice the work. Tiredness is not evidence that you are unsuited to it.

Find one person a few steps ahead, a teacher, an older student, somebody at work, and ask the questions you feel stupid asking. Write the answers down, because somebody behind you will need them.