We Are Trained To Control A World That Is Uncontrollable

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As students we live in a society that has programmed our brains to constantly strive to “be better.”  

In high school we are focused on our SAT scores. We are told that this number will determine where you go to college. No pressure, but this number will also set the bar for where you go to graduate school since by the transitive property, where you go to college basically sets the standard for where you will end up post-graduate.

We go to college.

We fixate.

We are told that just going to college is not enough to set you apart or to get you a job that is stable in the current economy.  You need to do more. You need to prove yourself.

We try to be better.

We are told to get internships.  These internship experiences, which most of the time, as incredible as they can be, are unpaid and  place more pressure on students to balance time between working a job that provides financially, and most importantly, what we supposedly are all attending college for, our educations. 

In between all of this, we have our social lives, which are equally as important to us.  We need our people.  We need to be surrounded by other people who feel our stress. We motivate each other.  We empathize each other.  We encourage each other.  

As students in today’s society, we spend so much time attempting perfection and focusing on the drive to succeed that we forget it is okay to fail. It is in our nature to fail.  Sometimes, we are actually supposed to fail in order to allow ourselves to feel human again. 

We live in a world that is not always controllable and sometimes bettering ourselves is truly found when we step outside of our comfort zones, challenge ourselves, and take risks.  Regardless of the outcome and no matter what path you end up on post-grad, whether you are traveling the world trying to figure out your life with nothing but a backpack or landing your dream job, the way to “be better” stems from accepting that sometimes we all need a little bit of failure in our lives to remind us that we are only human.