Why Do We Feel the Need to Be Perfect? - A University Student’s Perspective
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As a university student, there is a constant comparison that comes with always being in an environment with high-achieving individuals. This pairs with the need to always be on top of everything and the feeling that everyone has life figured out. You look around and see people from all over the nation getting internships, being a part of a multitude of organizations, and somehow having a high GPA while still having an engaging social life. This is where perfection starts to creep its way into the mind and takes hold of our perception of the community around us. We start to believe that, whether it be from our expectations from ourselves or society, we must be perfect and always have it together. But where does it end?
Always aiming for perfection can lead you to feel inadequate in certain areas of life. Rather than pushing the boundaries to try something different, perfection serves as a shackle that inhibits progress. When we only expect perfection from ourselves, leaving no room in our minds to fail or make a mistake, there is an unbearable pressure to not mess up. But if there is no room to make mistakes, then we can’t develop ourselves as people. Specifically in the sense of being a student, we should give ourselves grace. This is the time to try out everything you can and make the most mistakes possible, to not only learn but to see how you handle change and shifts.
In an academic setting, there can be this huge pressure to perform correspondingly and students can fall victim to academic validation. Academic validation is when individuals value themselves and seek validation for their academic success. If their performance in school is declining, so is the individual's self-worth. Having such a strong sense of worth tied to getting perfect scores and grades can be detrimental to our mental health. When you get stuck in this loop of academic validation, it could feel as if that is your only sense of self-worth, when in reality, there are a multitude of ways to succeed and it shouldn’t dictate the way you see yourself. Academic validation and perfection are intertwined in a way in which achievements in education and the pursuit of perfection can be seen as necessary to maintain this sense of self-validation.
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Dealing with this pressure from the community that you surround yourself with can make it feel inescapable. Having this self-validation based solely on how perfect you can be proves to be challenging. Solely, being focused on perfection can cause you to not be authentic with not only yourself but with how you present to others. Being able to display your genuine self is an essential part of sharing yourself with others and making sure that you are being true to yourself. If you only think about the most ideal way to present yourself, you wouldn't be accurate as to how you actually act. Not only is that cheating yourself of a legitimate experience, but it's also cheating the people you interact with from getting the in-depth version of you.
It's important to note that while striving for excellence is admirable, the pursuit of perfection can be detrimental to mental health and overall well-being. It's essential to set realistic expectations and learn to appreciate and accept yourself and others, including imperfections, as part of being human. Learning to embrace mistakes and failures as learning opportunities can help individuals reduce anxiety and feel more confident in their abilities. Instead of constantly questioning one’s abilities, we can learn to feel more assured in improving from the mistakes we make, rather than never making them at all.
Strike Out,
Writer: Emily Montarroyos
Editor: Jayna O
Tallahassee