Pressure doesn’t always make diamonds
How academic pressure turns into self hate
Summer has started. School has ended. Life is happily breathing in your face, and so are you. But your breaths are shallow, panicked. You slowly realize that no matter what you do, your mind is stuck in one place, and it’s probably at your desk, sulking on your chair, staring at your A*-guaranteed physics textbook telling you to copy and paste whatever it says. Then a month later you are in front of that dreaded paper thinking, “I should have done better.” The fact is you did.
You did do better, even if you think otherwise. You come out of that exam room with people rushing around asking their friends what they got on question 5 and saying that question 20 was probably the trickiest. They laugh ‘with’ you, saying that you probably don’t need any of this; after all, you are a natural, and that only increases your existential dread, thinking that wow, it’s going to be so shitty when I pummel these expectations to the floor and probably go down with it since you are drowning in your own shame.
If that describes you, then congratulations, buddy. Me too.
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When I started trying to find the root of the problem. Google would shove the word NARCISSISM in a big, fat font in my face. But it’s not. Not really. The problem is not from within; it’s actually from your environment and then slowly seeps into your brain.
Normally every action has a reaction, or whatever that physics textbook that was in the first paragraph says. You spend hours, weeks, and months studying what you can, being at the top of your game; normally, you would expect to gain exactly what you worked for and even more. Sometimes a little narcissism comes into play: “No one has done as good as I did.” Then when that blow comes. When you fall off the high hill of extreme and toxic expectations, that is when reality settles in and you think, “Maybe I am not as special as I think I am,” and that shit is absolute destruction.
You’re human. Act like it. You are not some special being that can do no wrong. Just because you feel that maybe you did horribly, even if you are 100% positive about it. Life still has ways to prove you wrong. That teacher that believes in you does for a reason. Those classmates that think you are some divine academic weapon do for a reason. Those parents who probably pour their sweat and tears into helping you, guess what? They also do it for a reason.
There isn’t a way to console you if you actually did badly on whatever test or exam you took. We aren’t children that can shut up with a piece of candy. But all you can do is accept that you can do wrong. And that not meeting those expectations that people have set up for you is not a shame you need to get buried under. Live.
