I don’t think anyone has ever made a more uncomfortably relatable film about being a twenty-something woman than The Worst Person in the World.
Like clockwork, I crawl back to my writing roots when tears stain my face. When I’m curled into a ball, with sunken eyes from restless sleep. When the impending doom becomes so overwhelming that I feel suffocated.
Julie, the protagonist of The Worst Person in the World, reflects the experiences of those who grew up gifted. The AP Scholars with Distinction, those within the 99th percentile on the SATs, and those who heard time and time again from everyone around them about how much potential they held, how far they were going to go, and the great things they must have been destined to achieve.
I built my identity around intelligence and academic validation, all because third-grade me was called “smart” when she decided that the times tables were fun. This landed her a spot in the advanced math program, consequently catapulting her down the paved path of standardized testing, advanced coursework, frailty of ego, and perpetual imposter syndrome. She was called smart by her teachers, parents, and peers, so that must be an inherent part of her personality. She was called hardworking because of the byproducts of her success, so that must be another defining characteristic of hers.
I think our identities are less intrinsic than society likes to make them seem. It’s less about being who you want to be and more about being a byproduct of everything everyone’s ever told you that you are.
I’m not quite sure when, but I’ve noticed that intelligence is no longer something I possess, but something I have to live up to. I live in the shadow of myself, caught in the gray between the woman I am, the woman I thought I was, and the one I am inadvertently becoming.
I recently joked to a friend, “The better my grades get, the dumber I get.” My point was that earning the highest grades sometimes involves shortcuts, short-term memorization, AI assistance, or other methods that stray from the actual nitty-gritty of learning something. In striving to earn an A, I become detached from the content and attached to the methodology of reward-hacking the class for the best possible outcome. The more successful I look on paper, the less engaged in learning I become, all because learning has become inseparable from the task of proving myself.
In the case of Julie, she begins her story as a straight-A student at a top medical school in Oslo. She pursues medicine because it is an elite, competitive field where her excellent grades matter, and thus, she matters.
A lot of self-proclaimed gifted students fall into these traps. You see the pipeline of the humanitarian, save-the-world geniuses who step foot into their elite Ivy League institutions and somehow end up in investment banking. You see students sell their souls to engineering degrees, medical school, and law school because of the prestige, because they are capable, and because these fields supposedly encompass the great things they were told they were meant for. Money and academic degrees become currency in a world of ego, social status, and proving to everyone that we can live up to the qualifier of intelligence placed upon us all those years ago.
Eventually, Julie realizes the misalignment between her studies and her passions. She finds herself more interested in the mind than the body, so she drops out of medicine to pursue psychology. Then, another pivot: the photography arc. She spends her student loans on cameras and lenses, feeling a calling toward the art of it all. Safety net no more, she begins searching for a new identity outside the constraints of academic validation.
Writing this right now feels a tad ironic, considering I just changed my major and booked my first paid photography gig. It makes me think of another favorite film of mine, Lost in Translation, where Scarlett Johansson’s character laments her failed attempts at writing and photography, joking about how every girl goes through a photography phase.
Another dab of irony, as I prioritize writing this article. I am so like other girls, or at least like the ones in the films I love.
You see this trend a lot. The academic burnout trope. The embodiment of a “coming-of-age,” but for grown-ups. Knowing everything at 18, but nothing at 22. The Rory Gilmore downfall.
Which brings me back to Cooley’s theory of the looking-glass self. It’s so hard to know what you want from this world when so much of what we thought we wanted was built around how we imagined others perceived us. We internalize these perceived judgments, letting them shape our identities and the people we believe we’re meant to become. Sometimes, the very praise that builds our confidence becomes the thing that confines us.
For instance, I felt pressured into pursuing a finance major for the “job security” it seemed to offer. It was the furthest thing from what I actually wanted to do, but I convinced myself that because I was smart, I should pursue a harder degree to open more doors.
The major change, the canon event of it all, becomes a moment of self-evaluation, where you ponder whether you’re making a mistake or taking a step toward your true purpose.
Maybe that’s what makes the title The Worst Person in the World so painfully ironic. Julie isn’t the worst person in the world for changing her mind or abandoning the futures she once imagined. But when you’ve built your entire identity around potential, every deviation from that potential feels like a failure.
And some of those things only reveal themselves with time. It’s almost impossible to predict the blank canvas of our futures, let alone know which strokes are the right ones to begin the painting with.
“I wasted so much time worrying about what could go wrong, but what did go wrong, was never the things I worried about.”
As a constant worrier, this line from Julie stopped me in my tracks.
What did go wrong was never the things I worried about.
I think everyone has those random, formative pieces of media that they still think about. One of mine was The Midnight Library, a book that explores the infinite versions of a life that could have been lived. It opens with Sylvia Plath’s famous fig tree passage, the branches representing the many possible futures that become harder to choose between as the fear of losing the others sets in.
There are so many things I could be, so many versions of myself that I can imagine.
I think I’m in a constant battle with my current self and my potential self.
The blank canvas is terrifying.
I’m not sure what the universe has been trying to tell me, but the theme of “dizziness” has continuously found its way into my week. From reading a reference to Vertigo in John Green’s “Hollywood Ending,” to rewatching Uptown Girls and being struck by my favorite spinning teacup scene, to coming across the following quote from Søren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite philosophers:
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
The terrifying realization that we have the power to choose our own lives and, consequently, the power to choose wrong.
As Julie approaches her 30s, she confronts the dreaded realization that she is no longer so certain of the life she thought she wanted.
“I feel like a spectator in my own life.”
With Vertigo, there is that sensation of falling even when standing still. I think that’s how I feel.
Vertiginous.
Uncertainty can do that.
But I kept sitting with this thought about dizziness, about falling, and about losing control, and eventually, I started to see it differently.
We feel vertigo or anxiety when standing at the edge of a cliff. Nothing is forcing us to feel this way, but there is that quiet part of our brain that registers that we could jump. That it is a possibility.
Funny enough, it was my rewatch of Uptown Girls, a classic, that made me see this differently. I think the beauty of movies is that they sit with each of us differently. For me, the teacup scene is one of my favorite parts of the film. Molly and Ray, the young girl she babysits, ride the spinning teacups at Coney Island as an escape for when life feels too heavy to handle.
In this bittersweet scene, when everything begins to spin and the world goes dizzy, there is this cathartic moment where you feel a certain magic in the dizziness. A freedom in willingly surrendering control after having already lost it to the cards life dealt you.
There is this paradox of possibility that exists. It is such an anxiety-inducing freedom to be uncertain of where to go, overwhelmed by the plethora of potentially wrong decisions, because every choice means the abandonment of an unlived life. And anxiety is exactly that: the infinite versions of what life could be pressing in on you all at once.
We’ve been conditioned to associate not knowing with failure rather than possibility. A blank canvas is only frightening when you believe you can ruin it.
But I think I’m trying to rewire my brain to realize that I’m not the worst person in the world.
And maybe Julie never was, either.
Maybe there isn’t one definitive version of ourselves we’re supposed to become. Maybe we’re allowed to be a collection of people we’ve been, people we’ve outgrown, and people we’re still becoming.
It is a privilege to mess up because it is a reminder that we are alive. This dizziness is a reminder of our freedom, of the potential and possibilities we have. We are not confined by our pasts, and despite the sunk-cost fallacies we convince ourselves of, we only have one life. It is too short to live with regrets, let alone to live in fear of them.
And so, I remind myself, what a privilege it is to be free.
To live a life where my greatest concern is that I still have the ability to choose.