Emily Yu - Week 3: I give your life a B+
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Living in the bay area many students understand the harsh work load. We attend schools filled with people who only seem to care about your grades, SAT scores, college, and extracurriculars. It's easy to judge people by what is visible: the A in their grade book, the 4.0 GPA, or the nine years they have competed in a sport. Eventually, a B+ starts feeling like failure. You are expected to have an extracurricular you've done since childhood, another that perfectly matches your major, leadership experience, teamwork, APs, and an amazing SAT score. And when you finally get that perfect score, you have to tell everyone that you “did so bad.”
Then comes the comparison. What did you get? What did they get? How many APs are you taking? Where are you applying? Compare, compare, compare. We take the best part of everyone else and build an impossible version of ourselves from them, expecting perfection because someone else is perfect at something. But what happens when the pressure becomes more important than the person you are? What happens when you lose sleep, turn down plans, and stop doing things you love just to chase another number? Are we really supposed to believe that a score is worth more than our happiness?
Who cares if you don't have all As? Who cares if you take two APs instead of ten? Who cares if you don't attend an Ivy league school? Who cares about that if you're not happy doing it. What's the point in living when you're not enjoying it? Find meaning, find your balance, live at your own pace and find what you love to do and do it forever.
Of course, doing your best and preparing for the future matters. But there's no reason to destroy yourself to meet everyone's expectations that were never yours. Everyone wants something different in life so why are we trying to be copies of each other?
At the end of the day, your future it's not determined by one score, one GPA, or one college acceptance. It's shaped by your choices, your relationship, your hard work, and most importantly, what gives your life meaning. Find your balance, find what you love, move at your own pace. Success should not be about becoming perfect but rather becoming you.
Everyday I think about the unpredictable future. I can only hope that I will be successful and my time spent studying pays off. But how do I continue not knowing this for certain?
ReplyDeleteIn middle school, when someone told me that they did not plan on going to college, I was truly astonished. I had never even considered another path in high school, hearing that they did not share this same goal of mine was unfathomable. I have always wanted the college experience, so getting a college education is incredibly important to me personally.
I often find myself hearing about someone’s extracurricular activities or GPA, and subconsciously comparing them to mine. I truly think it's absolutely disgusting the culture that has arisen because of the horrific college admissions process. To think that we constantly compare and lose sleep just so we can get into a school. Life does not even end in college. When we finish at 22, the question will no longer be what was your GPA. But it will be about your job or relationships. The continuous cycle of stress, pressure, and expectations never seems to disappear. I completely agree with you Emy, and sometimes I wish I was in Idaho just so I do not have to live through the Bay Area’s competitive, toxic environment.
Emily - I really appreciate the repetition in your blog, as it really does justice to the frustration felt by local students. I’m also sick of the comparison. It feels like an insecure parent comparing their child’s scores with another parent’s. The only thing comparison does is set up a never ending standard and need to prove oneself to their peers.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, comparison culture needs to die. Grades already funnel us into different futures and creates the student to be the perfect candidate on an assembly line. Why make it worse? We are all going to be bound to the same wage system anyway.
Schooling doesn’t necessarily strip away the humanity from us, but pressure does, and I totally agree with your assessment of the issue.
Hi Emy! I find it quite saddening that this topic is so applicable to our community. We all have been comparing ourselves to our peers for as long as I can remember, even going as far back as the “Minute Math” quizzes from the first grade. I really like your use of anaphora and overwhelming listed questions to put to paper our shared experiences of rising anxiety with each bombarding comparison. Your blog has made me begin to think more about this competition we have admittedly constructed for ourselves and how it will affect us once we finally go off into the real world. Will we continue to compete with new peers in college? Will we funnel this frustration into aggressiveness as we enter the workforce? Will we ever be able to forgo this villainization of our surroundings to instead emphasize teamwork and chosen calmness? I also agree with your assertion that this is a bay-area specific issue. In part due to Silicon Valley’s competitive tech industry, I think the cultural aggressiveness has undergone a trickle down effect that has left even children vulnerable to standardization, but without the emotional maturity to separate their performance from their own selves.
ReplyDeleteHey Emy! Your blog stood out to me as the pressure you described is something that many students can relate to, especially in a competitive school environment. The opening about students being often judged by grades, SAT scores, AP classes, and extracurricular activities piqued my interest, as it is easy to see someone else’s accomplishments and forget that we are only seeing one part of their life.
ReplyDeleteOne part that stood out to me was your question, “Are we really supposed to believe that a score is worth more than our happiness?” I thought this was an effective way to express the main message of your blog. It's true, grades and achievements are important, but I agree they should not become the only way someone is measuring their self-worth. I like how you emphasized that finding the right balance and doing things that makes you happy.