Every day, I always feel like I haven’t done enough. I haven’t accomplished enough. There is more I need to do. Ever since starting college, I noticed how easy it is to feel this type of way. From attending classes and lectures, studying for exams, completing assignments, and trying to maintain a social life, it feels like I could’ve done more. With 24 hours in a day and even when I finish everything I planned, it’s never enough. This makes me wonder why we put so much pressure on ourselves to always be productive.
I’m a Pre-Mechanical Engineering student and I’ve come to the realization that college is way more than attending classes and getting good grades. Expectations such as joining clubs, networking, and building connections, gain experience all to prepare for a future career. Although these opportunities are important, trying to do everything tends to get overwhelming. Sometimes, seeing other students accomplish so much makes me question if I’m enough myself
To be more in depth, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story.Adichie explained how people can create their own understandings of others when they only see one story or perspective and how it can truly be wrong and or hurtful. I can somewhat relate this with college students to experience something similar when comparing themselves to others. We often see someone’s achievements without seeing their struggles, failures, or sacrifices. We create an unrealistic image of how a successful college student should look like. There is also a saying for this; “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
In Roxane Gay’s My Body is a Cage of My Own Making. Gay discusses how society placed expectations on peoples’ bodies and how those expectations effected their every day lives. Her article focused on weight and body image, but from a more broad view on this, the idea of being judged by society’s standards can also apply to college students. Instead of being judged by their body, some students are often judged by their grades, achievements, and productivity.
There is a term called “LARP,” where it is to pretend that you know or are a part from something when you are not. On social media and even around campus, people would often show their achievements. However, we rarely see stress, sleepless nights studying, and struggles. This creates pressure for other students to act like they are doing just as well even if they are being overwhelmed. Instead of being honest about our struggles, we sometimes feel like we have to play the role of being successful college students.
The UMBC Library; where students are able to study and do their assignments or to hang out with friends.
Although having goals and being able to push ourselves to greatness is good. Without such expectations, we will not challenge ourselves to reach our potential. There is a difference between working toward success and believing that our accomplishments are worth everything.
I think college students feel like they are not doing enough because we are constantly comparing ourselves to expectations that could not be realistic. These readings remind me that we will not always see the full story behind someone’s accomplishments. Doing your best with the time and energy you have is always enough.
Wow, you have explained the past 3 years of my life! The exception to be “that college student” can truly be draining. And of course social media does not make it any better. In fact like brought out, it just pushes the single story narrative even more. I have come to realize recently that balance is everything. And coming to understand what “success” looks and feels to me. This was very nicely expressed, thank you for writing about what so many of us feel.
I can definitely relate to this because college makes it feel like there is always something else you should be doing. Even when you finish your assignments and study for your exams, you start thinking about everything else you could be doing to get ahead. Social media makes it even worse because you see other people accomplishing things and feel like you should be doing the same. I think it’s important to remember that everyone is on their own path, and just because someone else seems to have everything figured out doesn’t mean they actually do.
The product/result is often the single story released to the world. It is the result of countless hours of practice and learning and trials and successes and failures and acceptions and rejections and balancing tasks with life and love and loss and I could go on and on and on and on… but you’d never know. Because the easiest thing to see is the surface-level single story.
I really relate to your last part, because I constantly feel like I’m not doing enough which seems to be shared by many college students. The extremely competitive job market and rise in prices of nearly everything is most likely to have a huge part in that. Being a college student feels like I agreed to being constantly exhausted and over performing on a schedule created by society. A single story can be extremely dangerous, and I really hope we can all work to eradicate it. I believe that starts with us having to be intentional about what we say and how we perceive things, and remind ourselves that this life as a college student should not be a competition with an imaginary foe.
I agree I feel like even though I have been heavily involved in campus life in all my 3 years on campus I still haven’t done enough with my college experience. Academically I still couldn’t tell you what I have learned but if you put me into a setting where I need to apply it I can succeed. Socially I feel the students here aren’t people I can connect with but I see other people very known on campus and I think how do they have so many friends around them.