Ever since I was a child, I always strove to be the best in everything that I did. I never wanted to get less than an “A”. I remember if I ever received a lower grade than an “A”, I would immediately feel that the world was going to end and that I was never going to be successful. I wanted everything to be perfect. However, perfectionism is not always a good quality to have. Sure, it gives one motivation and even helps to do well on exams but being a perfectionist can cause great stress and pressure on people.
For instance, one downfall of perfectionism is that now parents want their kids to perform the best out of everyone in their classes. Perfectionism comes into play because the children are constantly worried about their grades or anything that they do and they want their parents to be happy with them. Children do not want to disappoint their parents. Then, students will stay up late at night studying for an exam or writing a paper because they want to make sure that they don’t let down their parents. This behavior is also provoked because the parents can be overly critical towards their children.
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Another downfall of perfectionism is that it makes an individual take longer when doing their work. People who are perfectionists tend to repeat things over and over because they feel that their work is not done or they need to keep fixing it until it is perfect. For example, I am a person that when writing a paper, I ask about 10 of my friends to proofread it. After so many people have read it, I still do not feel completely satisfied with my work.
Another weakness of perfectionism is that the individual doubts their ability to complete a task. When it comes to being assigned homework, projects or anything that involves completing an assignment, perfectionists already assume that they will not be able to do the task because of how difficult it is and complicated. Individuals start stressing about the assignment weeks in advance and it just causes more trouble than necessary on the individual.
Sometimes excessive worrying or studying for an exam can undermine a person’s ability to perform. This happens to me all the time. I start studying for an exam about a week before and I get a “B” or “C” on it while my friend’s who study the day before for it would get “A”s. It is very frustrating. It just puts more pressure on the perfectionist when they don’t do as well as they had thought they would and makes them feel worse when it seems like it was for nothing.
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Perfectionism can be good or bad, depending on how you handle stress and pressure. The best advice is to always perform the best that you can because being perfect all the time can be exhausting and tiring. We do not need to be so stressed early in our ages.