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The Pressure for Perfection in Society
Society puts a lot of pressure on young people today to live a life of the highest standard but for some people this is not ideal. People constantly struggle to keep up with the standards of societies ideas of living the perfect life. Pressures can come from multitudes of people such as parents, celebrities, or someone’s friends. Competition is ongoing in today’s society to live a “perfect life.” This is causing people to conform to society’s ideas and not allowing a person to make their own decisions. Individualism needs to be exploited rather than looked down upon.
The idea of perfectionism is different for everyone, but society seems to promote the idea that money, a college education, and a successful
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College is basically the first step of achieving a socially accepted life. Though, pressures for going to the best school are taking a toll on students, and if they are not accepted to where they want to go society will look down upon them as “you should have done better.” Students will not stop until they reach what they want even if it may be hurting them. The pressure is not just coming from society, but also the parents."Many teenagers I've talked to call their parents' bluff when told that they just ‘want you to be happy.’ They suspect what their parents secretly want is a high GPA” (Simmons). With parents not completely supporting their child to be an individual this is adding to the conformity in society to reach “perfection.” The outcome of all of this is that students are becoming even more stressed than they already were to meet their parents expectations. They are only adding to the stress of achieving or failing in their child’s life. (Simmons). Parent only wants to see their child be great so when they don’t reach the standards they unintentionally make their child feel even worse than they already do. The pressure to succeed to the highest possible extent has never been more stressful for a …show more content…
Having a high paying job will put someone at the pinnacle of society. Researcher Thomas Curran says that there is now competition where there never was before especially with achieving at high level and people are being forced to keep up and conform with each other to stay with society’s standards (Orso). This quote is saying that there is competition everywhere to keep up with society's standards and achieving at the highest level goes with the idea of getting the perfect job. Getting a job that will send someone off in the right direction is hard enough for some people but finding one that is going to make that person socially accepted at the highest point is even tougher. Today’s culture finds the weakness in the individual and uses that against them (Curran and Hill). Society is not only forcing people to conform to perfection but to point out their individualistic deficiencies. A career can only lay out how materialistically well of someone can be. Yes, everyone wants the perfect job that can get them everything they want, materialistically, in the world but people can’t buy happiness with a high paying job that doesn’t fit who someone is as an individual. Instead of choosing a job to make someone look good in society people should choose a job for the individual rather than the majority. Meeting perfection in every aspect of today’s society
As the economy evolves and the job market continues to get more competitive, it’s becoming harder to have a successful career without some kind of college degree. This creates a belief in many young students that college actually is a commodity, something they must have in order to have a good life. There’s many different factors that influence this mindset, high schools must push the importance of the student’s willingness and drive to further their education. College isn’t just a gateway to jobs, but it is an opportunity to increase knowledge and stretch and challenge the student which in return makes them a more rounded adult and provides them with skills they might lack prior to
The “push to be perfect” (Thomas) is at an all-time high. Pressure for perfection from peers, parents, teachers and coaches is so unreasonably high that many students don’t think that they will ever be able to achieve it. A student feels that it is impossible to get good grades, be athletic, in multiple organizations, and most of all appear to be happy. Students have turned to cheating, drug/ alcohol abuse, and even suicide to try and cope. They are competing with friends for top spots, and believe that if they don’t beat them, they are a failure. Not only other students, but parents play a big roll, too. Their own parents and the parents of their peers will compare kids. New Trier High School’s Jim Conroy said that the biggest problem about pressure comes from the parents who compare (Robbins). With all...
Students are in colleges because they are told to, or because they still want to be financially depend on their parents and not have to worry about growing up to face the real world. The author in her article writes such ideas. Furthermore, since colleges became a big industry in the 60’s, and now the number of people attending has fallen, colleges use marketing skills to bring more students in. They try to make college sound as easy as possible to make more people register. Students, once in college are not happy and drop out,...
Although perhaps supportive of higher education their parents and Family members may view their entry into college as a break in the family system rather than a continuation of their schooling. In families, role assignments about work, family, religion and community are passed down through the generations creating intergenerational continuity. When a family member disrupts this system by choosing to attend college, he or she experiences a shift in identity, leading to a sense of loss. Not-prepared for this loss, many first-generation students may come to develop two different identities one for home and another for college, the student might feel he needs to do better in college then his parents. So the student might start feeling the pressure, that there is too much going on in his life and at home, because the parent is putting too much pressure to do better but the student just can’t stay focus on their studies, and they eventually will develop low grades he or she might just drop out of school, the parent might want them to work and go to school that could be difficult for the student. A student need to be successful in college to succeed, parent needs to be more supportive, and maybe their child can finish
“Individualistic cultures, in the western-hemisphere, [such as the United States,] emphasize… personal identity and self-determination. Conformity is far less pervasive in individualistic societies because democratic choices and laissez-faire viewpoints are somewhat considered.”
Society pushes today's youth towards higher education. The goal of grade school is to prepare the students for middle school. The goal of middle school is to prepare the students for high school. And finally the goal of high school is to prepare the students for college. The entire structure of education is to prepare youth for the next level of education. The problem with this system is that not all students are college material, as seen in the essay The Case Against College by Caroline Bird.
It seems as though the majority of college students these days aren’t looking to further their education because it’s what they really want, they do it to please their parents, to be accepted by society, or because there’s nothing else for them to do (Bird, 372). These expectations have led to students being unhappy and stressed, and have pushed them into a school or a job that they don’t particularly care for.
First of all, many high school graduates cannot handle college. Isabel V. Sawhill and Stephanie Owen describe college as a place, “one can obtain a traditional four-year bachelor’s degree”. The work load outside of the classroom could be compared to working a full time job. For example, if a student is enrolled in four college courses and is in class a minimum of four hours the student should spend at least four to six hours of studying. This may be extremely agitating and stressful to a student that is not good at studying. The new college student may realize that the schoolwork is too much for him to handle and instead drop out. In Pharinet’s blog post, Is College for Everyone? He states that “…it is estimated that in the U.S., approximately 50% of students who begin college never graduate. There exist students who are not yet ready for the academic and financial challenges of college. There exist students who do not have the desire for college or learning.” This statement is important because if 50% of students that begin college never gradua...
However, the question that does stand is if a college education is right for every high school student. From early education to secondary education, the belief that one can go anywhere from here and achieve whatever they set their minds to have been pounded into students heads. With these statements, there is always that underlying idea that these goals can only be achieved with the help of a college education, but this isn’t always the case. Counselors and teachers have been scouring the halls and classrooms in high schools encouraging the prospect of college while neglecting to offer other paths and choices that could fit a student better. Almost every person in this country can agree that school is a remarkable honor and something that is definitely not frowned upon, but the pressures to only look towards and pursue college could get in the way of what is best for a certain individual. By telling all students that they should attend college no matter the circumstances is potentially doing some of them a disservice
However, college may not be cut out for every teenager. Freshmen are dropping out after their first year because college can become a bit overwhelming on campus. The pressure of college whether it’s to maintain a high GPA score or impress parent’s, burdens many students. Although, college is supposed to improve their education, in hopes of obtaining a degree after graduation. Now, people attend college because his or her friends may go there.
Pressures on children in today’s society are a problem that is becoming more evident in academics as parents and teachers put more and more emphasis on these children to outperform their classmates, stress in the child’s life becomes an interfering problem (Anxiety.org, 2011 Weissbourd, 2011,). From preschool children to college adults, pressure to execute academic perfection extends across all areas of curriculum. In our highly competitive, American society, emphasis placed on academic achievement has never been so intense (Anxiety.org, 2011, Beilock, 2011). This need to be the best, fueled by our culture in America, has created a social force affecting education, a force to be reckoned with at that. Too often, parents and teachers sacrifice their chil...
Many students take their high school years for granted and do not always pull off the best grades. But then when they get to college, or a higher degree of education than high school they start to straighten up. The reason being is because after high school everyone can choose what it is they want to spend the rest of their life doing. The classes they take, are of interest to them rather than all of the required ones in high school. For this reason I feel that students are more likely to take college seriously and not just because of the money.
Whenever this happened, some always felt the need to blurt out that they knew something “the smart kid” didn’t; it was a terrible feeling that I tried hard to avoid. The concept of perfection also had a significant affect on my daily life outside of school. It prevented me from trying new things for fear of not being good at everything. As a perfectionist, I spent less time with my family because I was always studying, redoing notes, and “perfecting” assignments and
Perfectionism of the mind is a goal rationalists try to strive for. Perhaps the main problem with this concept is that it promotes over achievement on everything we do. For many...
As I entered high school the pressure to succeed and live up to my parent’s expectations increased. I joined clubs that my parents approved of, I took classes that would look good on my transcript, and I studied 24/7 to keep a good GPA. Seeing the people around me happy and proud of me was a good feeling. I stayed up all night just so I could study and get good grades that would make my family and teachers proud. Junior year I never got more than four hours of sleep a night. I was a zombie just going through the motions of life. As I began to look for colleges, the pressure to be #1 grew. My parents took me on countless college tours, thirty seven to be exact, in order to find the “right school for me.” My parents drove me around the country visiting tons of top engineering schools. Occasionally we would visit schools I wanted to visit. But every visit went the same. If my parents chose the school they smiled the whole tour and spent the car ride home talking about how great it was. If it was a school I chose