The anxiety that came with school along with the perfection and academic validation that I sought, ruled my life and honestly – it still does. Even as I am writing this, I can hear a voice in my head telling me it’s not good enough for people to read and that I should delete it.
In high school, I worked day and night to try and submit my best work. Even after I submitted something, it never felt good enough. I got burnt out, spending hours at the kitchen table with my mom crying because I couldn’t take the pressure of holding myself to an unrealistic academic standard.
Adults told me that I was, “learning valuable study skills.” In reality, this craving for academic success did not teach me about discipline or hard work, it taught me quite the opposite…an unhealthy balance between life and academics.
My need for academic validation got out of control in high school. Teachers started giving me praise for the work I was submitting and it felt amazing to have a teacher think highly of my mind. But soon hearing “good job” wasn’t enough, now I had to be “amazing” or “exceptional.” I began to believe that if teachers were not creating new words to describe me after every other assignment, I was failing.
I looked to academics to determine my self-worth.
Who am I if not an academic?
I built my life around my grades, something that was never a real indicator of knowledge – let alone someone’s identity. Every time I struggled at school, I not only felt like a failure at school or my life, but I felt like I was a fraud as well.
When I started performing poorly in university, it ruined me. I had no knowledge of how to balance healthy living with academics. I told myself that if I became an “A” student then I would feel good about myself.
I can now honestly say that I never have and never will never do anything perfectly because perfection does not exist. When you make perfection your only goal, you will always be disappointed.
Grades make up a significant part of our lives as students. They tell us what classes we can enrol in, what majors we can choose from and what universities will brand us as ‘good enough’ to allow entry. Although all these things are true for the average university student, they really do not define who we are as people.
Most of the advice that has helped me with my academic validation and perfectionism are the ones that seem so simple.
- Starting your work in little sections so it doesn’t look so daunting, maybe it’s just a title or an outline.
- Giving yourself a pass to do a bad job on the draft. Your assignment does not need to be written once, and perfectly.
- Set a timer for an assignment and put as much work as you can into it before it goes off. Then, take a break.
You are not a machine or lazy, you are human and you deserve a break. Your mental health is more important than any assignment. It’s okay to feel like you don’t know what you are doing. Chances are this assignment is different from others you have completed and you cannot expect to know everything before you start.
I realized, it’s not the task I am avoiding but the feeling I get about failing the given task. Being uncomfortable about failing a task is normal.
Speak to yourself as you would speak to someone you love. I love my friends even when they flunk a test, so how can I hate myself when I mess up?
The road to academic validation and perfection is a long one but I am trying to be more content with where I am at the moment. I’ve started to romanticize the life I have instead of the one I wish I had. Writing because I love it not because it’s perfect, learning because it’s interesting not because I have to. Living how I want to, not because of how I think I should. At the ripe age of 19, I am ready to live my life, to take challenges as they come, enjoy moments as I live them, and embrace the imperfection in life.