Ask a senior citizen about the corruption of our generation, and he or she probably will rant for an hour about promiscuity, an addiction to technology and offensive rap lyrics. And as a child of the new millennium, I can’t say that I completely disagree. In fact, I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t disturbed by scantily-clad eighth graders with iPhones and heavy makeup. These “young adults” obviously have been exposed to some distorted socialization process.
But today I intend to uncover another form of adolescent corruption, one whose disastrous effects typically go unrecognized by most of society. This specific kind of corruption exists in the mind of almost every student here at U.Va. Today, I reach out to every student who has ever pulled an all-nighter or cried about a B+. Today, I attempt to understand those who impose impossible standards of success upon themselves. Today, I officially declare overachievement a form of corruption.
We all have that friend — the Type-A perfectionist who attends every one of their professors’ office hours and involves themselves in a million leadership roles across Grounds. As observers, we worry about their increasing levels of stress and diminishing amounts of sleep. But we are not so different from our extreme friends; in fact, we can probably relate to their lifestyles quite well. We are all overachievers, you see, and society is to blame.
We, the children of tomorrow, have learned to view life as a checklist: We fulfill a requirement, check it off, inhale, exhale and move on. And why shouldn’t we? After all, so much in life is structured this way. At school, we need a certain amount of credits to graduate: We take foreign languages, non-Western perspectives and those pesky first and second writing requirements. We skim the readings, cram for the tests and do anything we can to get the A. But once we have completed each class, we release the information from our memories and never look back.
That’s kind of the essence of our generation, isn’t it? These days, we are more concerned with the end result: Do we get the A? Have we maintained our GPA? Can we list this club on our résumé? Society has taught us the art of distilling information — filtering our education — to find and use only that from which we may benefit. As a result, many students of our generation have lost their desire to actually learn. We don’t pursue our true passions. We only care about what shows up on our transcripts. The days when people came to college to truly further their knowledge of the world are long gone. They have been replaced with the days of overachievers who are willing to do anything to stay at the top.
As a textbook-adhering, overachieving high school student myself, I was worked to the bone. We were taught from the start to focus on the future. An A in geometry now could mean a bigger house when I was 50. So I followed the rules — I studied hard, got good grades and learned to take pride in my education. And I learned a lot — or so I thought. But thinking back, all I really learned in high school was how to defer gratification. I was told to invest in tomorrow at the expense of today. And so I did.
But is it worth it? Is there any guarantee that making the present time miserable will make the future any less so? Of course not, but we are nevertheless trained to believe it. And consequently, younger and younger kids are suffering from anxiety disorders, losing crucial amounts of sleep and suffering from stress ulcers so that they can retain their 4.0 GPAs, get into Cornell, then get into Yale Law, get a high-paying job, buy a big house ... You get the idea.
Is this what success has become? The right job? The most money? The biggest house? At the risk of sounding like a hippie here, why can’t success be measured in happiness or love? Why are we unable to pursue true interests in our generation? Why must we concern ourselves with the materialistic driving forces of modern society?
Perhaps the sane solution is learning the balance between enjoying yourself now and making yourself miserable so that you can enjoy the future. In the practical world, of course, we all attempt to find this balance. But while we are still caught in the grasp of modern society, we will never be free from the corruption that overachievement has instilled in us.
Lauren’s column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at l.kimmel@cavalierdaily.com.
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