College stress is engulfing the school as seniors worry about where they are going and juniors turn their eyes anxiously to the admissions process. But, while some students worry about the elite “name” schools, Sarah Pfander worries more about what the overachieving culture is doing to students who thrive on perfection and success.

SARAH PFANDER
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Opinions

I AM AN overachieving, upper-middle class, white, privileged female.

And, even though the topic is way overdone, I am here to talk about my college nightmare: the pressure to get into an elite college so that I can prove that I am intelligent, and that my high school years have resulted in success.

However, my college frenzy, the panic deep inside my chest, has nothing to do with a need to get into an Ivy League university.

I haven't set my sights on the “perfect” school or the impossible “reach.”

I don't necessarily face the daunting task of overcoming the 9 percent admission rate barrier that stands between most students and Harvard.

Instead, my bad dreams stem from a fear of rejection.

There was only one time in my life that I asked a boy out, and that was after weeks of planning, fretting, and encouragement from a few friends.

Basically, I fear the two-letter answer.

“No.”

Or, the five-word version meant to soften the blow.

“We regret to inform you …”

A rejection illustrates inadequacy. It ruins self-esteem, if only for a small moment. Insecurities come to the surface.

But, in terms of college admissions, a rejection becomes even more.

Essentially, I have yet to fail. At least, fail in a large sense. Sure, I was wait-listed at University Primary School for my inability to build with blocks, and I chickened out before I made it to the top of Bell Mountain in Sedona, Ariz.

Yet, in school, in extracurricular activities, in life, I have always done well, always succeeded. I have always met my expectations and the expectations of others.

So how can I not continue my clean record? Is there any option aside from complete success?

But then, how do I define success? Part of me doesn't want to deal with a “no.”

So, do I only apply to colleges to which I know I will gain admission?

Or do I turn into achievement overdrive and try to get into a top college, an effort that may simply result in a rejection letter?

People tell me not to stress out, that I will get into college, I will have a good time, get a good education, and my life will not be ruined.

Of course, to some extent, I know that. But is that enough? Is it enough to get into one college if I get rejected from three others? Is it enough to get into every college I apply to if I lower my standards and don't apply to any of the “elites”?

It's a conflict, a bind constructed by my own need to succeed and by the feeling that is what society expects of me. It's got nothing to do with education. It's got nothing to do with a dream school. It is all about measuring up against the yardstick that I have built for myself.

And this will be a problem for the rest of my life. Will losing a job be the end? Will I break down as soon as I fail to meet my narrow, ridiculous standards of success?

That is the biggest problem with the growing culture of overachievement in high schools. It raises a breed of human that can't handle failure or rejection.

In a few years, the nation's leaders will be dysfunctional supermen who are too scared to do anything for fear that they will not succeed.

But what do we do? How do we teach students who have been taught only to produce perfection that sometimes perfection is not possible?

A remedy to this problem would require a complete re-education. Overachievers have been taught to excel since they were pronounced “gifted” and thrown onto the one-way track to college in first grade. Teaching this breed of student that now complete success is not the only acceptable result would require undoing at least 12 years of the “you are the nation's future; you are special” brainwashing.

In my mind, there is, at this point, no real way to solve this deeply rooted cultural ill. However, in an attempt to make a point, I will propose a radical solution for the entertainment of all.

Ever the fan of a perfect utopia similar to the one found in “Brave New World,” I suggest complete education reform.

First, we nationalize schools and lose the differentiations. If there are no elite colleges, there are no elite high schools, and there are no elite students. We all learn the same things, at the same pace, with the same curriculum.

People who are pronounced to be geniuses will be sent through the newly developed scientific process that reduces their brain activity and returns them to “normalcy.” Meanwhile, people who are “slower” will have their brain activity sped up. This will ensure that we all learn at the same pace.

Careers will then be determined through a lottery at age 18 and students will go through a one- to four-year training program meant to teach them how to do their job.

At 22, they will be released from school, into the real world, where everyone will make the same amount of money, own the same amount of things, and do their jobs without questioning anything.

I think it sounds brilliant. Say good-bye to my dreams of Stanford and my burdensome, yet occasionally comical inability to slack.

RELATED

— New York Times: New York Times: A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them

— New York Times: New York Times: For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too

— Alexandra Robbins: “The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids”