Opinion: Overachievement isn’t everything.
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At the age of 16, I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life. I would take on leadership roles in every interesting club at my high school, rack up countless volunteer hours, write a book before turning 18, become my school’s valedictorian, get accepted into every college I applied to, attend Berkeley with a full ride merit scholarship and graduate with a bevy of job offers from newspapers around the country and the admiration of my peers. Guess how that worked out?
It looks completely ridiculous on paper, but that was my standard for myself in high school. Anything less than perfection was unacceptable to me.
Nights spent on the dining room floor (my preferred spot for academic focus for some reason) willing myself to read just five more pages before I couldn’t keep my eyes open weren’t uncommon, and anxiety over any grade lower than 92% was pretty much a constant. I was insufferable and overworked myself by choice, but I knew it would all be worth it when I could brag for the rest of my life about going to a prestigious university far away from home.
You can imagine my surprise when the rejection letters from Northwestern University and Berkeley rolled in. I was on spring break at the time; I still feel bad about ruining the trip to the coast for my family with my massive meltdown.
I was about halfway through watching Gilmore Girls at the time, and I saw a lot of myself in Rory. A quiet, studious overachiever with journalistic aspirations? They might as well have named her Sadie Tresnit (although my hair never looked that good). The college rejection letters were what separated me from the character
While Rory got into Yale, Harvard and Princeton after academically pushing herself to the limit, I was left facing the prospect of state school. I had done everything “right,” so why wasn’t I seeing the reward? Why wasn’t I a success?
In retrospect, it’s absurd that I was putting so much pressure on myself to succeed at such a young age when I didn’t even have fully fleshed-out ideas of success yet. I knew what I wanted academically and professionally, but I didn’t really know what I wanted for myself and my personal life.
Even Rory Gilmore floundered in a “smart kid” university when she suddenly wasn’t the top student in the class and everyone around her was just as accomplished. Would I have done well in that kind of high-pressure environment? I doubt it. At UO, my friends all have varying achievements and experiences and I appreciate those differences.
I spoke to my longtime friend, UO junior Grace Curley, on the topic since she and I went through the same intense internal pressure in high school. “I was aiming at Pitzer College or a private school in Boston. For me, ‘making it’ meant going to one of these schools, but especially not going to UO. It was a very shallow and short term vision of success that seems ridiculous and elitist now, but at the time it was as if I had tunnel vision,” she said.
I can relate to the tunnel vision comment — there were times when it seemed like everything I did (despite my insistence on only joining clubs and activities because I genuinely wanted to) was meant to “look good on college applications.” I had one goal and that was getting as far away from state school as possible.
The two of us toured UO together in April of 2021, a time fraught with anxiety over the fast-approaching college decision day deadline. As soon as I realized there was more to it than football and frats, it didn’t seem so bad. I was drawn to the library, the zany Honors College classes, and the countless student clubs that aligned with my passions. Though it still took some time for me to say “I’ll be going to UO in the fall” with pride, the prospect of staying in-state wasn’t nearly as dreadful as it had seemed when I was caught up in applying.
“Although I was crushed by some of my admissions [and] financial aid decisions, I actually felt a sense of peace when I decided to go to UO. I started to see that it had been the smartest option financially all along,” Curley said. “If I could get a quality education without going into debt, why would I choose otherwise?”
Now, in the second half of my undergrad education, my thinking has shifted a lot. To me, success no longer looks like pursuing all the things society, or at least academia, deems the best of the best. While the idea of doing well in school definitely still appeals to me (I confess that my current goal is to make the dean’s list every term), it’s no longer going to come at the expense of my health.
School is important to me, but it’s no longer the only thing that matters in my life. As Curley said, “getting quality food on the table is more important than working myself overtime trying to get perfect scores on assignments or having people on campus know my name.”
In the end, I’ve learned that no one is owed success. I thought I was doing everything right in high school, but there are a thousand different versions of “right.” Maybe it was right for me at the time, or maybe not. I certainly thought it was, but clearly the thoughts of my teenage self had no significant bearing on reality.
Regardless, I’m happy to go to UO now, and I can say that genuinely and without the grimace that used to come out with that statement. It was an unfathomable idea at the time, but I’ve learned to be content with where I am, manage my expectations and measure success by my personal achievements rather than unnecessary comparisons to others.