Perfect students. We all know them — I mean, it’s U.Va. There’s the student with a 3.7 GPA who is active in six different clubs and president of two of them and still manages to work out two hours a day and eat healthy. And then there is the rest of us, only in two clubs, squeaking by with a 3.2 and stuffing our face with French fries every time the workload gets to be too much. Naturally, we feel like crap about ourselves in comparison.
I’m wondering if the perfect-student phenomenon is universal or if it only exists in Charlottesville. I’m probably deluded in thinking that it is a U.Va.-specific occurrence, but the extremes to which it exists here have only really started to bother me recently. Perhaps it is because fourth year is almost half-finished and a lot of my friends are finding gainful employment in jobs that terrify me with their official-sounding titles and responsibilities. It makes me feel like I haven’t done enough and will never find a job or my place in the world more generally. It is a quarter-life crisis. I’m sure you understand.
Do none of these overachievers cry at night when the work feels like it is going to be too much? Do they wake up some mornings sleep-deprived, thinking, I really can’t do this unless someone gets me a gigantic cup of coffee or another legal drug that will make me feel like a human being? I think they probably do, but like most of us, they do their suffering in private and put on a good front through 8 a.m. class all the way until their last meeting at 10 p.m.
The problem probably lies in the fact that I compare myself to everyone else’s waking hours and don’t see the struggle late at night when they really aren’t sure they’re going to get a paper done. I think we all do, and I think it makes a lot of us feel like we just aren’t doing enough. We think our resume might not be as glorious as someone else’s, so we tack on one more club, one more volunteer opportunity. On the way I wonder how many of us have lost the things that really matter.
It seems like every generation has gotten more ambitious than the last. Our parents didn’t do as many extracurriculars as we do. Or so I’m told. They didn’t feel like they had to have a leadership position before 10th grade. There weren’t organizations in their high schools that were directly advertised as “resume fillers.” Maybe I’m being too cynical, but perhaps it is time to step back and think about what we really want.
Of course volunteering is great, but are you mentoring that girl to lengthen your resume or because you really want her to succeed? And of course getting chosen for an internship from thousands of applicants is a satisfying feeling, but what about when you get there and realize you hate every second of it? I’m hitting this point right now. I’m feeling like it’s time to stop trying to be the best at everything and start trying to be the best me. This isn’t news, I’m sure we’ve all heard, read and said it before, but as my fourth year is winding down and the vast otherness of real life is approaching, there is nothing wrong with saying it again. OK, quarter-life crisis over.
Simone’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at s.egwu@cavalierdaily.com.
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