I will be the first to admit that I’m a competitive person. I had always considered that to be an innate part of me, something I couldn’t really change because I was born with it. But as I’ve grown older, I’m realizing that it was more so an effect of what the world around me shaped me to be.
My whole life is and has been a competition. In elementary school, I was in a race to be in the highest math and reading class. I “won” that race. In middle school, it was to have perfect grades. I “won” that race. During freshman year, it was having the most extracurriculars. I “won” that race. Sophomore year, it was excelling in AP Physics 1 and 2, an all-junior physics class, while simultaneously taking Chemistry honors. I, in a difficult, strenuous battle, “won” that race and ended with all As.
This year, I am taking 5 APs, working multiple jobs, taking on standardized testing and playing two sports. But for the first time, I don’t feel like I’m winning the race. I haven’t been able to fully excel in or dedicate myself to anything, and truthfully I haven’t been happy. This has me thinking I may have actually been losing the race for years.
It isn’t an overstatement to say that, despite best intentions, many VHHS students are members of “competition culture.” Author Alfie Kohn describes competition culture as when “a child is told that it isn’t enough to be good — he must triumph over others. Success comes to be defined as victory, even though these are really two very different things.”
Unfortunately, that is exactly the environment I immersed myself in. The goal was to be the best at everything, because that was the expectation I had for myself. This cycle brought short-term dopamine, but in the long-run was a never-ending source of stress.
Initially, it didn’t seem so bad, because I was finding success. However, as my classes got harder, as I moved up toward Varsity athletics, as the pressures of college added in, that same success was much harder to come by.
More than anything, though, I started to lose focus of the things that were genuinely important to me. I looked around at my friends and my classmates, at all their courses and extracurriculars, and constantly felt like I needed to do more. I was obsessed with this concept of “more.” So I added “more.” I did even more extracurriculars, I took more hard classes and I tied my self-worth to my success in those areas. I stretched myself so thin, there was no “Aanya” left.
My perspective completely changed at the beginning of November when I attended the Journalism Education Association (JEA) convention in Boston.
At the convention, about 1,000 miles away, I was distanced from this competition culture. That distance helped me see things in a new light: I rediscovered my love of journalism, pondered what was truly important to me, questioned if competition culture brought any value to my life and eventually decided to carry out some drastic changes.
A fundamental value of competition culture is the idea that everyone is competing for the same spots in college or competing for a set amount of As in a class. This could not be further from the truth. According to Weil College Advising, no college has a set quota of admitted applicants for any high school. English Teacher Ellen Macias said there is no set quota for a certain grade in her classes. She simply sees grades as a reflection of mastery.
However, I , along with many of my peers, came to look at this fact in a very inaccurate light. This created a competitive environment where perfection became the expectation, not the exception. This inevitably led to unrealistic standards for me. Being a long-term member of competition culture, perfection became my own expectation, as well.
I found that perfection comes with a heavy cost: losing happiness and a sense of self. I spent hours and hours on homework for classes I had absolutely no interest in, I spent every second of my free time going to clubs that were putting me to sleep and I did absolutely nothing entirely for myself.
I backed up and thought about my life. If I took away school and my extracurriculars, who was I? Struggling to answer that question told me everything I needed to know.
Following the JEA convention, I decided that I wanted to find an answer to that question. So, I quit every extracurricular that was not adding value to my life and furthered my investment in the things that mattered most to me. After that, I reworked my senior year schedule plan to encompass classes I wanted to take, not just ones that would boost my GPA. Most importantly, I started taking half an hour out of every day to do things just for me.
And what did I find? I am finding myself again. I feel happier and more fulfilled with the things I accomplish. I have found the dopamine that competition culture gave me and I made it more permanent. My new form of dopamine is more than a one-time reward from academic validation. It’s a feeling of reward from making an impact in the areas that are most important to me.
Talking to teachers and counselors about my experiences helped me overcome another big misconception: Colleges want students who are invested in what is important to them, not students who stretch themselves so thin they inevitably burn out.
This meant that by prioritizing the things that were most important to me, I would find happiness and have the passion to find success in my post-high school endeavors. My ideology had been backwards this whole time.
I advise underclassmen to take my experiences to heart and stay clear of excessive competition and comparison. Next year, when you go to choose your classes, pick the ones that are of most interest to you, ones that add value to your life. Focus your time and energy on what is most important to you. Adopt self-worth culture. It will serve you and your goals much better.