The environment of studying at a big name university comes with an inherent feeling of competition. While I’m writing this from a place of primarily personal experience, this view has been reflected in casual conversations with friends, and I don’t believe it would be controversial to refer to McGill’s environment as competitive. Now this doesn’t only come from the institution itself (see: intense focus on grades, difficult marking scales, professors who know they’re teaching at a ‘prestigious’ institution and hold you to whatever standard they deem as fitting for that), but also the students at McGill who cultivate that environment themselves. I know that I’m guilty of this, and definitely have caught myself comparing everything I do to whoever sits next to me in lecture, to my friends in the same program, to those in my social groups. What happens though (at least for me) in doing this is that I lose an essential element of what makes my student experience enjoyable, and end up trapped in a cycle of burnout, disappointment, and just flat out stress.
Insecurity does play a significant role in my experience here. I often question what I’m really getting out of university other than a degree with “McGill” printed out on the top. The intrusion of knowing that jobs in my field are limited only exacerbated the need to look better than my peers in whatever sense I could, the most essential sense being academically. I feel it especially strong in being a student in the Arts faculty—I know that finding a job is hard, and lots of people in my faculty and program won’t end up doing anything remotely close to what they studied or what they’re passionate about. The idea that I could do everything in my abilities to achieve to my highest potential and still fall short leaves me constantly comparing myself to my peers, and feeling inadequate in comparison. It simultaneously pushes me to take on more work while feeling like that extra work I take on is inconsequential in setting myself apart—a vicious cycle of cat and mouse productivity.
It always feels like someone else is doing more, has higher grades and is working their way up that invisible ladder faster. While this can push you to work harder and participate in things that will teach you and add to your resume, it also transforms the most menial work into a contest of achievement. The constant pressure that comes as a result is in one word: stifling. I found myself feeling stifled after this holiday break, as even though the holidays give you an opportunity to recharge, I spent a fair amount of the break working. The work itself was amazing and I would do it all over again, but the subject is beside the point—the point being that I came back to school feeling at once accomplished and also profoundly needing to make up for the few weeks I had missed. Even though I had just gotten incredible experience related to my program, I still felt inadequate when coming back to school, and threw myself into assignments, midterms, etc.—basically only looking at what project was next and how I could still ensure I was reaching the same degree of ‘excellence’ I felt was necessary to maintain whatever standing I could carve out for myself.
When I said that this pressure was stifling before, I don’t necessarily mean that it significantly lowered my marks, or made me less technically productive (technically meaning being able to complete assignments or organize projects). What I mean is that it drastically changed my ability to feel and act in a way that made me happy and allowed me to enjoy the work I was doing. Even things that I enjoyed as something outside of a competitive atmosphere, like writing, became another challenge that needed to be dealt with and forgotten about in a linear fashion, something checked off in a ‘to do’ list rather than an experience of relationship, reflection, and learning.
This brings us quite nicely to a particular flashpoint, or: on why I haven’t been able to bring myself to write an article for Her Campus since November. First and foremost, ever since starting in the fall semester, I’ve genuinely enjoyed writing for Her Campus. It gives me the freedom to write on what I’m interested in, and doesn’t stop me from writing the occasional stupid article (see: ‘Top 10 Places to Cry on Campus’). It hasn’t been a burden by any means, and usually gives a welcome break from the purely academic writing privileged in all my classes. But when I returned from the holidays, I could not, for the life of me, find the energy to write and then submit. My conclusion as to why this was goes back to the feeling of being absolutely stifled by comparisons of innate competition and the resulting pressure I was feeling.
Like I said, pressure can be productive. The way I was feeling it however became a drain: instead of pushing me to do better, it made me fearful that whatever I released simply wouldn’t be good enough. I was so wrapped up in making sure that whatever I put out adhered to some imaginary standard of perfection that I set for myself that I just didn’t release anything. It took away from all ‘creative’ (creative being used loosely in this context) production that wasn’t necessitated by an academic deadline, and left me feeling empty outside of a malignant attachment to said academic production. I couldn’t write anything, no matter how desperately I wanted to, because I knew that writing would be flawed in some way and that was a thought I simply couldn’t cope with.
Recovering from this mindset came from doing something that I thought would be counterintuitive in terms of divorcing myself from the competition and comparison that ruled my everyday: doing my resume. Even though doing your resume is just selling yourself and your labour value to employers, it actually functioned outside of that for once. It gave me a minute to think about how what I was putting on my resume existed beyond what I was just writing on paper. It did make me reflect—and not just reflect on what I had done, but on how surprised I was that I had done it. All the time I had been so focused on what was next and how that would measure up to those around me that I never fully took a second to congratulate myself or fully feel through what I was doing. I actually sent my girlfriend a text speaking to my surprise, and her response was, in laymen’s terms “No shit?”.
It’s no secret that it’s easier to see all the things others are doing right and all the things you’re doing wrong. What surprised me was the degree to which it was so easy to completely forget myself and my enjoyment in doing this. It can be overwhelming, and can feel suffocating, especially in an environment like McGill’s. Failing to look back and really critically reflect on what I did resulted in months of what felt like mental gymnastics and self-punishment, and changed the way I worked and walked through my life. I’m not trying to say that all feelings of distress surrounding achievement can simply be cured by not comparing yourself to others; rather I’m trying to make the point that we need to be able to take the time to truly consider what we’ve done so far, and understand that our experiences cannot so easily be reduced to comparisons of better/worse/the same as others. If you struggle doing this on your own (as I did), look to the people around you and trust that when they say “I’m proud of you,” or congratulate you on something. They are saying that because you have done something to deserve it. We lose something essential to our determination when we only look forward, look to what’s next on the docket—I certainly lost my sense of self, lost my ability to see myself beyond this reduction. It’s important to remember the detriments of this loss when striving to be the best we can, especially during our tenure as students.