By: Shreya Joshi the perfect futurePeople say every school year is stressful but senior year feels like a special process. There’s a lot of pressure to figure out your perfect future and it seems like everybody already has–that you’re alone in being uncertain. In addition to uncertainty regarding college or scholarship applications, there’s also keeping grades up, participating in extracurriculars and working a part or full time job. One feels like they need to be perfect at everything which leaves one feeling like they’re perfect at nothing. The pressure to be perfect is immense. Despite its vast impact, it can be boiled down to expectations. Expectations from parents, from society or from ourselves; Expectations lead us to question every decision we make. Are we applying to enough scholarships or colleges? Are our grades good enough? Why didn’t we participate in more extracurriculars? We lament and worry about all the things we could be doing and should be doing to be the perfect candidate. But the perfect candidate doesn’t actually exist. are we "good enough"?Perfectionism is a construct that we’ve created, it derives us from a sense of superiority–often white superiority because that’s what sets the standard for what is “good enough”. This culture of perfection harms marginalized individuals through imposter syndrome (not feeling good enough in comparison), having to go twice the length of their white counterparts to avoid being criticized, and perpetuating the model minority myth. The idea that by virtue of being Asian, we have straight A’s and will get into an Ivy. This makes Asian youth believe that anything less than means they’ve failed. We think our identity is in our achievements so when we don’t know if we will be selected or accepted– it’s stressful. Nobody feels comfortable admitting that though, so we feel isolated on our island of self-doubt. Our self-doubt is so ingrained that we are conditioned to believe we will fail. Failure isn’t an option though, so we overwork ourselves. "eventually, on our isolated islands, the stress builds until it feels like we're the only ones drowning."
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Year ARchive
February 2023
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