Hi, my name is Tyler and I’m addicted to achievement.
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\nI want the best grades, the best comments, the best school, the best residency, and the best job. Whatever I achieve, it is not enough. However far I go, the horizon will continue to stretch before me, beckoning me to distant excellence. My pace will always be breathless because I do not stop to rest, life is both a sprint and a marathon\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe race goes neither to the fast nor the steady but to he who is both.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, I believe if there were an “Over-achievers Anonymous,” I would have my own chapter. Recognition of affliction is the first step in recovery, and I really think I have come a long way since realizing I have a problem, but residual difficulties still remain. Here, in school, I face a culture of excellence, where achievement is pursued not for any pleasure to be derived from the next level of success but for the pursuit of excellence itself\u00e2\u20ac\u201das if the pursuit, not the achievement, holds value. <\/p>\n
This produces a certain neurosis to which pre-meds (and pre-dents, and pre-law students, and others) are especially susceptible. Anyone who took a science class at BYU knows how neurotic pre-medical students can be about exam points\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthey (we?) are not above groveling and bickering to win back a few marks. Not all pre-professional students are like this, of course, but it does seem especially prevalent among us.<\/p>\n
I am ambivalent as to the merits and dangers of this problem. On the one hand, the relentless pursuit of excellence is noble. A quixotic quest for unattainable merit is to be applauded and serves as a spur pushing both individuals and humanity to new heights. On the other hand, I fear many of my BYU alums and I were not pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake; we were pursuing knowledge for admission’s sake, or summa cum laude<\/em>‘s sake, or a pat on the back’s sake, or whatever. We might call it the Eagle Scout syndrome.<\/p>\n I grew up wanting to achieve. I wanted my duty to God, I wanted my Eagle Scout award, I wanted good grades, I wanted to get a good scholarship to BYU, I wanted an acceptance to an Ivy League school\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI wanted many ends. The problem, as I see it, is that if every end becomes merely a means to the next end, we end up engaging in the pursuit of an endless train of mirages, thinking perhaps satiety awaits at the next oasis, when in fact the next oasis only leaves us thirsty for more. <\/p>\n Now, in fairness, this process works both ways. Just as many ends become means to other ends, I have also pursued activities as means only to have the activities become ends unto themselves. So, for example, while I originally wanted my Eagle Scout, my pursuit thereof awakened in me a deep and abiding love for nature (thanks in no small part to my parents, my scoutmaster, and fabulous scout leaders). Similarly, while school began as a pursuit of grades, I find myself more and more often hungering after knowledge for its own sake\u00e2\u20ac\u201dapparently even the relentless pursuit of ends can lead us to appreciate means.<\/p>\n Still, I think it is important to recognize in ourselves the tendency to make the pursuit the goal. Tocqueville said it best:<\/p>\n “The desire of prosperity has become an ardent and restless passion in their minds, which grows by what it feeds on. They [Americans] early broke the ties that bound them to their natal earth, and they have contracted no fresh ones on their way. Emigration was at first necessary to them; and it soon becomes a sort of game of chance, which they pursue as much for the emotions it excites as much as for the gain it procures.”<\/p>\n The “emotions” aroused by the pursuit of excellence, prosperity, and achievement can be intoxicating\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand therein lies the problem. In the final analysis I suppose it is necessary we pursue ends; the trick is to make sure the ends are really worthy. If we pursue achievement because we wish to be recognized, or if we pursue wealth so we can accumulate more stuff, we are bound to find our lives wasted in the pursuit of things that don’t matter–even if we get what we want. If, on the other hand, we pursue knowledge, virtue, charity, and the funadamental enjoyment of life, we are much more likely to be happy–even if our desires are frustrated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi, my name is Tyler and I’m addicted to achievement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}