Nobody wants to be the one struggling nor the one who can't keep there head above water in a figurative sense.
With school starting in the next month, you can expect stress to rise and anxiety to increase tenfold. In the past decade diagnoses of anxiety have surpassed depression in young adults going through the pressures and expectations of academia. What used to be small setbacks to our parents is what our generation view as failures.
Have you ever received that midterm back and realized that maybe you weren't meant for the major your parents thought was best? I have. The pressure for success and perfection have overtaken many of our childhoods. Taking those college classes in high school, attending test prep classes on the weekend, volunteering at the local animal shelter, skipping dinner to study for the 3 exams you have the next day and doing all of this while you play a varsity sport for your high school. You probably didn't take those harder classes because you loved history that much, and you probably didn't volunteer because you wanted to, and I'm sure it was you who decided you had to study until 2 a.m. You do all of this to basically make yourself look appealing to colleges; colleges who don't know the real you.
An article that appeared in The Huffington Post back in March titled “In the Name of College! What Are We Doing to Our Children?” describes how older generations learned to fail, and they learned to move past that failure and keep going forward. Today's generation lacks the ability to move past a failure. Why? Because nobody in today's society let's you forget a failure; over and over we hear our parents berating us for mistakes we've made. This pressure for perfection is toxic. We grasp on to these mistakes we make and let them consume us.
The all consuming obsession for perfection runs all aspects of our lives—from our social media accounts to our friendships to our schoolwork. Everything has to appear perfect. When you first get to college you meet a lot of people; people that have done so many wonderful things and are ahead of you in what feels like everything. We've been taught that if you're not the best, you're the worst. Over and over again we hear that if it's not perfection it's not good enough; if you don't have a 4.0 you'll never succeed. We let these expectations run our lives and we forget that these moments we're living right now are only going to happen once.
Growing up with parents who were already successful, I've heard over and over again how it runs in my "genes." Although some may not have overbearing parents, they're still hard on themselves about their endeavors. Our parents have our best intentions in mind, in a sense. They push us through our school years with expectations and pressures to perform well in school and all aspects of our lives. They want us to get into top colleges, to secure that lucrative job in a global company and just all around be successful. Some may stop to consider the backfire and some may not.
Unfortunately the pressure can cause stress and anxiety to manifest. With the growing rate on suicides on college campuses, outreach efforts have grown nationwide to prevent these tragedies from continuing. But the fact is that the more pressures is placed on college students and the more expectations college students must live up to, the more likely the numbers of suicides will continue to grow.
We all have that laundry list of disappointments and constant regrets, but sometimes, you have to let everything go and just breathe. What you're dealing with right now will pass. Keep yourself busy to keep your mind going so that you won't sweat the small stuff. Netflix is a great place to just let your mind wander into a world that is stress-free and easy. So seriously, give yourself a break sometimes.
