Since the time I was about 8-years-old, I signed away a part of my life to the sport of gymnastics, and in doing so, openly accepted that I was okay with being defined by a number. At such a young age, it didn’t occur to me that teaching people that receiving a 10.00 praised and encourage the concept of perfection. However, as I grew older I found myself becoming more consumed by this idea of perfection, and even when my gymnastics career ended, I couldn’t escape it.
This idea of reaching perfection in the form of a number is all around us: it eats away at us in school in the form of a 4.0 GPA, it whispers in our ear during the ACT being disguised as a 36, and even after all the college placement exams and grades are given out, it follows us on our post-college careers when we strive to get the perfect 180 score on the LSAT.
Regardless of how many adults tell us those numbers don’t really matter in the long-run, we are conditioned to believe that perfection exists and that if it is possible to achieve, we are the ones who should be achieving it.
Now, I would be lying to you if I said that upon realization of this, I allowed myself to accept my “imperfect” college GPA and believe that as long as I am working as hard as I can, that number doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try to convince myself it won’t matter ten, five, or even a year from now, I continue to stress about my grades and calculate what I need in order to have this number grow to perfection. Still, here’s what I am refusing:
I refuse to let the “perfect” GPA of a 4.0 convince me that I am not smart, hard-working, dedicated, committed, or passionate about my work. Sure, sometimes, it can be discouraging to study for hours on end and receive an 80% on a test that you felt was a sure-fire 95%. And I’m not going to tell you that the “Consider re-writing this, there’s more to be said here,” comment on an English paper won’t disappoint you after writing four drafts to create what you thought was the perfect final draft.
But why do those comments and scores get to take all the power that I have and convince me that my worth in the working world is determined by such classes?
I’m going to sound preachy here, but try to bear with me: companies care about experience. They might look at your transcript and wonder why you didn’t do very well in your Stats class, but their curiosity won’t last long before they see that you are an English major and that numbers probably aren’t your strong suit.
In fact, they are going to care much more about the life and work experience you’ve had and why that shows them that you are the perfect fit for the position (or one would hope). This constant pressure that we are putting on ourselves to get the 4.0 has to stop. It has to stop because it isn’t benefitting us or contributing any positive aspects to our lives.
All it does is allow for us to beat ourselves up and fall into this never-ending spiral of whether we will have the grades that our dream company wants us to have.
A few years back, Special K released an ad that opened up with a baby being placed on a scale with a voiceover that said, “From the moment you’re born, you’re defined by a number,” and they were right.
Gymnast or not, it doesn’t matter if you are competing for a perfect 10, what matters is that your life starts based on a measurement, some of which can be considered “good” or “bad” and from that moment on, you strive to achieve and eventually maintain that perfect number.
No one should feel like they have to be defined by a number, more importantly, no one should feel like there is such thing as a perfect number. If you have a 4.0 GPA and you received a 36 on your ACT, good for you, that’s very impressive.
But if you don’t have those numbers, don’t convince yourself that you aren’t perfect and that being perfect is what you need in order to have success in life. All you really need is a good attitude, a strong work ethic, and experience in the field that you hope to one day be a part of, and once you have all that, the last thing on your mind will be whether less than perfect GPA was really good enough.
And that right there is why from this moment on, I refuse to let myself be defined by a number.