Cassie E.
Photography by Racheal Holp
If you are reading this, know that you don’t need to overwork yourself just because others look like they’re doing more.
I spend a lot of my life putting intense pressure on myself, constantly pushing myself because I know that I am capable of more than just the bare minimum. I come from a long line of over-achievers, and for a long time, I’ve been working to accept the idea that a mindset of always needing to do more is not the healthiest. And that’s the difficult part: there is nothing inherently wrong with pushing yourself. The negative aspects of a full schedule come into play far more than we might realize. I’ve sacrificed meals and sleep, two of the most important, basic needs of life, more times than I care to admit. It hurts to admit, but sometimes, taking twenty minutes out of my day to sit down and have an actual meal benefits me much more than I could have ever expected.
My current aspiration for personal growth is two-fold: stop comparing myself to everyone around me (which is wildly difficult in an educational setting) and cut back on how often I complain about how stressed and overwhelmed I am. To me, these go hand-in-hand. I find that, very often, I get into an unintentional, almost unconscious cycle with people in my life; we seem to compete with each other over how absolutely awful our lives are at any given moment.
“You got five hours of sleep last night? Lucky, I only got three.”
“Look at my calendar for this week. You think you’re stressed?”
“I have five finals, you only have four? Wow.”
These conversations help no one, and yet I find myself around them daily. This form of comparison is one of the most dangerous types. I believe healthy competition with peers can be beneficial, to a certain extent, but not this. There is not one person who comes away from a stress-comparison battle feeling good about themselves. Every participant in these conversations only walks away feeling much worse; complaining, in this case, is not a healthy mental release. It only puts more pressure on us to perform, to take on more roles and classes and challenges just because Jessica in biology has more finals and gets less sleep than us. We glamorize unhealthy and irrational lifestyles every day, and we don’t notice it until, suddenly, we do, and at that point, at least to me, it seems illogical to continue down the same path.
It is okay to be stressed, to feel overwhelmed and like nothing you do will alleviate the weight on your chest. In a way, that’s all college is. But, where we go wrong is when we compare our weight to others, a constant journey of one-upping. Despite feeling like adding one more task to a given day would be what pushes us over the edge, we feel this great urge to do it anyway, to beat some outside force in a competition that does not matter at all. So if you’re reading this, try to think critically about the types of conversations you’re having and how you feel when you have them. Notice when you tend towards comparison and actively work against its influence.
Life is remarkably difficult and complex for its own multitude of reasons–try not to make it worse for yourself.
Cassie E., Arizona State University ‘25
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