I remember crying weekly over the college process. I felt engulfed. I saw it as “my moment” to prove to the world that I was good enough, smart enough, just enough. I wanted my intelligence to be respected and I thought an elite brand was my ticket for recognition.
I would usually work from 7 am to until past midnight. Caffeine replaced sleep and I was strangely proud of it. I remember joking with my friends about my strange unhealthy sleeping patterns, occasionally pulling “all-nighters” or waking up at 4 am to squeeze in some final reviews; a part of me loved that people knew how I hard I was trying to get to the top. I knew I was sacrificing things most humans cherished, and it made me feel like I was more dedicated than the rest of them. I skipped family dinners and got upset when my parents would question why I worked so hard. They would say “You don’t have to be the best” and those words would crush my soul; I would reflect silently, brewing thoughts of they-just-do-not-understand, “If I didn’t want to be the best, why would I be killing myself?”.
While I praise Germantown Academy for many reasons and hope to one day send my children there, my crazy confused mindset was only nourished while attending the well-respected private school. The environment was filled with competition and I succumbed to a strict definition of “success”. Freshman year I felt surrounded by people who were better than me; I hated that feeling and I pushed myself in every direction to “catch up”. I continued climbing and wanted my college acceptance letters to finally provide me with so affirmation that I had “made it”.
Senior year was filled with stress and fear.
“Why isn’t my GPA higher?”
If only I could be as smart as blank.
“Where are you applying?…oh”
Now three years later I realize none of that actually matters and none of that stress determined “my destiny”. The place I ended up is the place where I felt the most genuine and least amount of pressure to be better than anyone else.
In the process of my growth I have become more comfortable with improving myself, rather than proving myself. I am trying to uncover genuine passion rather than playing the comparison game. I will admit that there is still this part of me that wants to be recognized, wants that shout-out, wants the award, even when I know I am not better than anyone else. However I no longer believe an award or top ranked anything is any reflection on my ability to make a positive impact on this world.
However I will admit, now threw years later, that close-minded ladder climbing human still creeps up on me every time I think about medical school once in a while, and when it does I try to remind myself that a 4.0 does not really matter, what matters is a dedication to humanity and a passion for learning.
The way I see it, every human wants to feel important and in our current culture, we are convincing ambitious confused teenagers that this is the only path. The college process, where students are expected to outline their entire identity, ironically often strips individuals of any genuine reflection because it makes the criteria for acceptance so strict. College pursuing students cannot figure out who they want to be because they are spending too much time being the person who will be accepted.
We are encouraging them to do service, because it will look good on their resume. Do not take a break and go to the park with your family; that experience won’t make a strong college essay. A dinner with your friends? Forget about it.
These thoughts of mine are better further articulated in William Deresiewicz’s new article, “Don’t send your kid to the Ivy League“. In it he describes the perspective of the admission’s staff and the rather brutal manner in which the kids who are killings themselves to be enough just are not enough. He further describes the facade of these super humans that do get their acceptance,
“These enviable youngsters appear to be the winners in the race we have made of childhood. But the reality is very different, as I have witnessed in many of my own students and heard from the hundreds of young people whom I have spoken with on campuses or who have written to me over the last few years. Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”
When I reflect and read these articles, I realize no one is winning this game, this race to the top. There may be jobs, money, and a network at the top, but how many people are achieving those things because they genuinely believe it will bring them joy? Deresiewicz hones in on the pivotal phrase that gives ambitious individuals hope, the “return on investment”, or the optimism that is will all be worth it in the end.
“Return on investment”: that’s the phrase you often hear today when people talk about college. What no one seems to ask is what the “return” is supposed to be. Is it just about earning more money? Is the only purpose of an education to enable you to get a job? What, in short, is college for?
The first thing that college is for is to teach you to think. That doesn’t simply mean developing the mental skills particular to individual disciplines. College is an opportunity to stand outside the world for a few years, between the orthodoxy of your family and the exigencies of career, and contemplate things from a distance.
Learning how to think is only the beginning, though. There’s something in particular you need to think about: building a self. The notion may sound strange. “We’ve taught them,” David Foster Wallace once said, “that a self is something you just have.” But it is only through the act of establishing communication between the mind and the heart, the mind and experience, that you become an individual, a unique being—a soul. The job of college is to assist you to begin to do that. Books, ideas, works of art and thought, the pressure of the minds around you that are looking for their own answers in their own ways.
The push is disconnecting me from who I am us with who we are.
