Poison Ivies: The Fallacy of Academic Validation
October 1, 2024
Writer: Marlenie Menjivar
Editors: Ava Londa, Chloe Robinson
“I am going to fail.” It’s a singular phrase I had grown far too familiar with over the course of my academic career. Every time I walked into an exam room, wrote a paper, or had to do a class presentation, his singular phrase festered in the back of my mind, eating away at my confidence and self-esteem. The power such a simple string of words can hold over a person’s psyche is remarkable.
I used to feel like my entire worth as a person was determined by my grades. A singular score held more value to me than anything else in my life. My hobbies, interests, and passions were pushed entirely to the side to make time for my schoolwork. Anything less than an A was unacceptable. It meant that my work was not good enough. That I was not good enough. It didn't help that the rest of the world seemed to encourage this mindset. “You did so well because you’re so smart!” my teachers would say. “We don’t have to worry about you because you’re such a great student,” my parents would tell me. Every compliment only fueled my craving for validation and upped the pressure to keep up my image as a “good student.” If I wasn’t a good student, who was I?
This feeling only got worse once I got to college. In my pre-collegiate years, I was one of the brightest students in class, but upon starting at UT, I was surrounded by thousands of other students who also received the same label. This only meant that I had to work even harder to maintain my grades just so I could keep up with the rest of my classmates. It was as if I had an unspoken obligation to my school to continually outperform myself over and over again just to validate that I belonged there. I was not working hard for the love of learning anymore. My passion for learning and expanding my knowledge about the world had completely eroded. All that mattered was the A.
Perfection is a fallacy, and failure is the remedy. High-ranking universities make us believe that academic excellence guarantees future success and that anything less demeans our worth. I no longer believe this “truth.” We work ourselves to the bone to continually meet this expectation, but where does that leave us in the end? You might have the most prestigious job with great pay, but does that even matter if you resent going to work every day? You might have garnered many awards and honors over the years, but what meaning do they have when your body starts breaking down from the sheer amount of stress you've put yourself through? What does any of it mean to you if you aren't even happy with your life?
The truth is that I needed to experience failure over and over again to truly understand who I was and what I wanted to be. It is easy to get stuck in the idea that if you fail once, you are doomed to keep failing, and there is a sense of truth to this sentiment. You are going to fail. But that shouldn’t scare you because of one crucial universal truth: everyone fails. The difference between actual failure and success is whether or not you decide to keep moving forward. The determination to keep on trying even after failing is what determines success. A grade is just a singular number, a small reflection of your identity. You are so much more than just a number.
