We have come to live in a society that is solely based on unrealistic expectations. Teenagers are expected to know exactly what they want to do once they get out of high school, receive perfect grades, and land a dream job immediately after college graduation. There is an overwhelming amount of pressure on young adults to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their lives. For those who are more on-edge and high-strung, they resort to perfectionism to attempt to relieve common societal pressures.

These expectations are forcing young adults to succumb to this pressure and constantly strive for perfection. I can say with certainty that I am one of those individuals, and that it is not necessarily a positive thing. Persistence is both a gift and curse that comes with being a perfectionist.

A perfectionist stays up until late hours of the night, sometimes even until 3 o'clock in the morning, for there is an intense fear that there was not enough accomplished in that particular day. (As I am writing this article, I am realizing that it is well past the time that I should have gone to sleep at). One can be deprived of sleep and still not have a desire to go to bed, for there is another chapter of a textbook to be read, or one more homework assignment that can be finished. There is this feeling that there is always something that needs to be improved upon.

Perfectionism is also a problem when it comes to grades in school. The grade of a B+ or A- is never good enough; it has to be an A or A+. Others tell you to "shut up" and "stop worrying about it," but you can't help but stress over it. You constantly compare your own abilities to that of others. Despite common belief, you are not complaining for attention, but you are actually preoccupied with flawlessness. As a society, we are now defined by numbers and grades, which strongly contributes to this ideology.

It is common knowledge that extreme perfectionism can cause those who have it to fall into a deep depression when their unrealistically high expectations are not met. There is a difference between normal perfectionism and neurotic perfectionism. Unlike normal perfectionists, neurotic perfectionists set unrealistic goals and experience a more unhealthy type of perfectionism.

When it comes to time management and perfectionism, one can fall under two completely different spectrums. On one end, tasks are never finished, due to the individual continually working on them because they are never good enough. On the other hand, each task is started obnoxiously early, for a fear that it will not be finished in time. Personally, I fall under the second category.

As a society, what can we do to relieve the growing amount of pressure that causes many to set unrealistic expectations? Although it is a difficult concept to grasp for some, we must emphasize that it is okay to not be flawless. As cliché as it sounds, it is okay to make mistakes and grow from them. It is perfectly okay to realize that you can only do so much in a day.