Comments on: Are You a Stressed-Out College Overachiever?

By: Ashley

Ashley — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:20:04 +0000

It’s so true that overachievers are stressed out simply by trying to raise a letter grade by one. I was in an impossible science class with an arrogant professor who thought if 10% the class passed his killer tests, he had to make them even harder. The time I spent studying for that class was making my other classes suffer.
Finally I came to terms with the fact that C was still passing and spent the time on my other classes. I ended up with A’s in all of my 4 other classes. Even then, for a long while the perfectionist in me was struggling to take that C as a failure on my part. It took time but I finally convinced myself that the C from the terrible teacher didn’t really matter. One grade shouldn’t affect your life.

By: Sydney

Sydney — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:45:19 +0000

I’m a senior in high school and im an overachiever my friends tell me it and some of the people I group my self with are too. High School and College are suppose to be the best years of ones life and highschool isn’t living up to what it was suppose to be and I blame it on my “overachieving”. I already realize the fact that I am an overacheiver but I can’t help it, I can’t bring my self to relax with my overachieving I fear that if I loosen up that I will not be happy with my self. This leads me to the stressing thought that in college I want to stop this so I can enjoy it. I play Softball and absoloutly love it, but I must consider it pretty much my social life. Befor that I played Basketball and I regret quitting it everyday but I wanted to focus on Softball. I realized that it had to be done just for sleep hours, but now that I have more time I devote more time to home work. Along wih other AP classes, I take an AP studio art class and I enjoy it to a point, but this class helped me realize my overachieving is a bit out of hand. Maybe its an ocd but when I draw I must get so detailed with the drawing that I refuse to stop till it is almost a replica of the actual image. This made it hit me when I stay up to 4:30/5 on a school night or staying in on a Fiday to do a concentration project which is due once a week for about 10 weeks. I am starting at the “de-overachieving” but it takes awhile and and you have to start small. Hopefully I’ll get better at it and it’ll get better from here.

By: Angela

Angela — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:28:15 +0000

I think that every overachiever should read this. It’s also important to know that not every overachiever appears to be overachieving in the eyes of others– People may come from all sorts of backgrounds which puts them at a disavantage and they spend their whole life not only trying to catch up, but trying to outrun the rest of the pack, even though they are missing one leg. I learned the the overachiever’s dilemma lesson the hard way. I worked two part-time jobs– to take care of my my mom and brother here and extended amily of over 40 relatives back home in a third-world country– while going to college full-time, worked during every school vacation (one summer I worked at one job from 9am – 2:30 pm and then ate my lunch on the train while heading to Brooklyn to work another job from 3:30 pm – 10:30 pm), then after college I took on a job where I was the sole administrative and research assistant to four attorneys, which required me to work ungodly hours where I worked sometimes until 2 am. Did I also forget to mention that I went to an ivy league college, where I also started and ran a tennis club and made deans list a few times, even when they raised the required dean’s list GPA from a 3.3 to a 3.7, that I studied for the LSATs and completed my law school applications while working for those four attorneys, and only took a weekend of in between college and my first (well-technically fourth) full-time job, and then took three weeks (which was spent locating housing) before starting a dual JD/MA degree? And that’s just half of the story. Needless to say that I was the perect candidate for major depression, which kicked in just before my final semester of law school ater a series of inexplicable events and bad luck, which has hurt any chances of completing my degrees. It took going through major depression, which essentially takes away your ability to focus, concentrate, or stay up for more than 5 hours before you spend the remaining 20 hours sleeping only to wake up feeling like you never slept. But to an over-achieving overachiever, I had to learn the hard way that I need to stop overachieving and learn how to be happy. I might have fooled myself into thinking that having a balanced life meant balancing two jobs and going to school full-time or measured happiness in terms of A’s but if reading this helps someone else to circumvent major depression and learn this lesson, then posting was well worth it. Indeed, the hardest lesson for an overachieving overachiever is to just stop overacjieving….Look around you not everyone else is doing it and they are happier than you are. You know you are an overachiever if your therapist asks you to define happiness and you tell her “it means getting A’s silly.” Watch her reaction….

By: Meddock

Meddock — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:46:45 +0000

This is awesome!
Great advice for students, thank you.
I think that every person has a right to choose , for example in college we have a mandatory class called student success, but it sucks because they’re forcing us to keep a dairy or so called time management skills, but how you can do it? I hate all that stuff since I personally think that life is hectic and chaotic which is good and if you start to plan your everyday life you will become something like a zombie or a robot

By: Meddock

Meddock — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:46:08 +0000

This is awesome!
Great advice for students, thank you.
I think that every person has a right to choose , for example in college we have a mandatory class called student success, but it sucks because they’re forcing us to keep a dairy or so called time managment skills, but how you can do it? I hate all that stuff since I personally think that life is hectic and chaotic which is good and if you start to plan your everyday life you will become something like a zombie or a robot

By: Survival Guide for Freshers « Leatherhead Matters

Survival Guide for Freshers « Leatherhead Matters — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:18:45 +0000

[...] Are You a Stressed-Out College Overachiever? If you’re a serial overachiever like me, you may be looking for ways to stop the endless cycle of joining new clubs and taking on more responsibility on campus. [...]

By: Katie

Katie — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:55:04 +0000

I liked your article in that it has some very good tips on prioritisation and boundaries, but I am also mindful that your article is very much geared toward the US college experience. I was on exchange in CA for six months, straddling both third and fourth year. Amazingly, I found the US college experience to be so relaxed that I spent half of my time travelling, and was still able to come back, cram for my exams and walk away with a 4.0 GPA. My roommate was involved in every club imaginable, and therefore very busy, but at least she got to be a part of extracurricular activities!

I am now training as a clinical psychologist at a graduate school in New Zealand. Extracurricular activities are out of the question. I now spend 60 hours a week studying to keep my grades up and 20 hours a week working part time to pay my bills. I need an A to A+ average to get scholarships to afford to study next year. This has been my NZ college experience for the past four years. That’s all I do – and short of quitting college (and my career), there’s not much to cut out.

It would be far more useful if someone wrote an article about how to tolerate, rather than cut out, study/overachieving-induced stress?

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:39:46 +0000

Yeah, you say don’t stress out, but all of those things you list are NECESSARY to get into a good graduate program. You have to be the best of the best to continue. It is idealistic to think that you can get away with being more relaxed. I know because I did exactly those things you list when I was in college, and now I am fighting hard for grad school. I don’t know if I am going to get in and it is BECAUSE I was relaxed about grades and extracurriculars in college. I wasn’t lazy, but I tried not to be the psycho stressed out college student. Now I am paying.

By: BPO

BPO — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:11:19 +0000

Very good article. I know I’ve been there, and learning to sit back instead of taking on everything is a really tough decision to make.

By: Summer Beretsky

Summer Beretsky — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:32:18 +0000

Catherine, I just finished my final semester of grad school this past spring. I love what you wrote about making straight A’s and being miserable! I believe it’s entirely true. The top student in my cohort went through a terrible mess of anxiety, fueled by sleepless nights, in order to “achieve” high grades. Pyrrhic victory, anyone?

I was fairly miserable myself, too. On the first day of my very first graduate level course, a professor told our class that earning an “A” means you’ve done well, and earning a “B” means you haven’t done well. “C” wasn’t even discussed. What pressure!

By: Tamra

Tamra — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:33:13 +0000

I agree, the latter was the best choice Catherine.

I am known to make all A’s but I am also known to be the type of person who measures myself not according to a “man-made” grading system, but rather the competence and knowledge deep down I know I have. Grading is a cutoff if you know what I mean; it isn’t always the best measure of intelligence. This theory has been very controversal especially when speaking on the topic of standardized tests (i.e., GRE’s, SAT’s ACT’s, etc).
No one is perfect and perfection is only for the supernatural. No human being can say that they’ve done the impossible.

I’m not a philosophical intellect but one thing Aristotle said that I love is “educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” In other words, there are more important things in life besides reaching for the stars.

I’m sure we’re all great acheivers but accepting our human side (that is, occassional flaw) will help us to become better! Grad students like us really need to remember that.

By: catherine

catherine — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:32:59 +0000

Tamra, I’ll agree with that. I had a wee’un right out of high school and started college the same time (with a double-major) I was pregnant *and* worked full-time. I did not do many extra-curriculars but I was constantly involving myself in long drawn-out projects that I didn’t need to.

Now I am in grad school and it’s only getting harder and harder! Once I started grad school I knew I needed to prioratize: make straight-A’s the whole way and be miserable, or take an occasional B and be happier. Let me say, I’m glad I chose the latter, because in some classes making the A really would have been the death of me!

By: Questions for your first semester of college life « The Honors College at Rutgers-Camden

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:42:30 +0000

By: Tamra

Tamra — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:23:21 +0000

Summer Beretsky, very true and thank you for your comment.

Many underestimate the stressors associated with grad-school/college. This is becoming a sort of epidemic if you will.
Once a student enters their senior year of college and first year of grad-school the “real world” becomes a very distinct part of one’s life. In other words, you are not totally removed from reality so much so that you’ll look back and say “wow, what a wonderful life I had in college/grad-school.” This, however, might be based on the individual.

But more than likely you will be grateful for all the things you’ve learned, for the field of study you chose, and for the day you graduated. It’s worth it but it’s also good when it ends.

Now that’s reality!

By: Summer Beretsky

Summer Beretsky — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:01:20 +0000

Tamra, I think you’ve made a few great points there. Sure, once you’re in the “real world” for a couple of years, the college/grad school experience might distort itself and become rosier in retrospect. But, when you’re a college-aged student and you’re suffering from anxiety related to classes, extracurriculars, finances, and family issues, it could very well be the strongest and most painful level of anxiety you’ve felt in your life thus far. Whether it will increase or decrease as you age is irrelevant; it can still knock a student off his or her feet.