+
upworthy
Family

Concerning study details how perfectionism affects college students

For years, we've told our kids that they have to be perfect to succeed. Turns out, they might have been listening.

perfectionism, college, studies, success
Canva

Chasing perfection leads to nowhere but exhaustion

For years, we've told our kids that they have to be perfect to succeed. Turns out, they might have been listening.

If you feel anxiety about slipping up — like, the tiniest mistake is irrefutable evidence that you're secretly a failure — you might not be alone.

A study suggests that, compared to young people 30 years ago, more college students are, or feel expected to be, perfectionists — and that might be a problem.


Two scientists from the United Kingdom analyzed personality tests from over 41,000 American, Canadian, and British college students, dating from 2016 back to the late 1980s, comparing three different kinds of perfectionism and how much they've gone up or down over time.Overall, the data showed:

  • A 33% increase in young people feeling judged by society for not being perfect (for example, "My parents will be mad if I get less than an A").
  • A 16% increase in young people judging others ("I have no patience for my partner's mistakes").
  • And a 10% increase in self-judgment ("I am upset that I didn't get 100% on that test"). Americans seemed especially self-judgey.

This incessant drive to be perfect might be stressing us out to a sickening degree.

Being a perfectionist may seem OK at first. It seems like nearly every single job posting these days specifically asks for someone detail-oriented. ("I'm a perfectionist" is a go-to answer to the classic biggest-weakness interview question for a reason.)

Yet perfectionism has been linked to mental health problems like depression and anxiety, which young people seem to be especially vulnerable to these days.

One problem appears to be how society defines — and demands — success.

The authors weren't able to test the exact cause for this, but they have some ideas. One contributing factor might be our increasingly success-obsessed society. Since the '80s, we've taken the idea of meritocracy and mythologized it.

"Meritocracy places a strong need for young people to strive, perform and achieve in modern life," said author Dr. Thomas Curran in a press release. "Young people are responding by reporting increasingly unrealistic educational and professional expectations for themselves.”

Other possible causes might be parents demanding more out of their children than they did in the 1980s and/or the panopticon of social media.

If perfectionism really is both problematic and on the rise, it's not going to be an easy problem to solve. But there are potential solutions.

Curran and his co-author, Dr. Andrew Hill, did not address specific solutions in the current paper, but, when asked, Curran said:

"We (my group) typically advocate balanced working lives, regular breaks from the social evaluation of social media, a focus [on] one’s own accomplishments (not others'), and depressurized environments that do not hold excessive expectations or perfection as criteria for success."

(By the way, if you need help with this, psychologist Tamar Chansky wrote a list eight personal strategies over at HuffPost. Alternatively, this might be something to unpack with a therapist.)

perfectionism, habits, changes, reality

8 Strategies For Making A Better Life

www.huffpost.com

In addition, Curran suggested that it might be time for schools, universities, and other organizations to teach the importance of compassion over competition. He and his co-author have previously praised Google's program of rewarding both successes and failures.

So while it might be admirable to aim for that gold star, it's important to remember that mistakes happen. It's OK not to be perfect.

True

After over a thousand years of peaceful relations, European semi-superpowers Sweden and Switzerland may finally address a lingering issue between the two nations. But the problem isn’t either country’s fault. The point is that the rest of the world can’t tell them apart. They simply don’t know their kroppkakor (Swedish potato dumpling) from their birchermüesli (a Swiss breakfast dish).

This confusion on the European continent has played out in countless ways.

Swedish people who move to the United States often complain of being introduced as Swiss. The New York Stock Exchange has fallen victim to the confusion, and a French hockey team once greeted their Swiss opponents, SC Bern, by playing the Swedish National Anthem and raising the Swedish flag.

Skämtar du med mig? (“Are you kidding me?” in Swedish)

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

The MC Hammer dance though.

Father and daughter dances are a traditional staple of weddings. They tend to range somewhere between tearfully sweet and hilariously cringey. But sometimes, as was the case of Brittany Revell and her dad Kelly, they can be so freakin’ cool that millions of people become captivated.

Brittany and Kelly’s video, which amassed, I kid you not, more than 40 million views on TikTok, shows the pair grooving in sneakers (Brittany’s were white because, hello, wedding dress) to their “dance through the decades.”

It all began with Young MC’s “Bust a Move,” to give you a clear picture. And bust a move, they did.

Though the duo did a handful of iconic moves—the tootsie roll, the MC Hammer dance, the Carlton, just to name a few—“the dougie,” made famous by Cali Swag District, was the obvious fan favorite.
Keep ReadingShow less

Fowl Language by Brian Gordon


Brian Gordon is a cartoonist. He's also a dad, which means he's got plenty of inspiration for the parenting comics he creates for his website, Fowl Language (not all of which actually feature profanity).

He covers many topics, but it's his hilarious parenting comics that are resonating with parents everywhere.

"My comics are largely autobiographical," Gordon tells me. "I've got two kids who are 4 and 7, and often, what I'm writing happened as recently as that very same day."

Keep ReadingShow less
Identity

75-year-old ‘hip-hop granny’ impresses and inspires with her dance moves

Ms. Stephanie didn’t even start formal dance lessons until she was almost 30.

Ms. Stephanie bringing it at her hip-hop class.

Stephanie Walsh isn't your average hip-hop dancer. At 75, "Ms. Stephanie" is still able to hold her own on the dance floor, popping and locking with people a third her age, and she loves it.

When you see her dance—and her enviable muscle tone—you might think she'd been a trained dancer all her life. But she actually didn't take any formal dance lessons until she was almost 30.

Walsh told Growing Bolder that she had wanted her daughter to dance when she was little, so she got her ballet lessons, which the daughter hated. Realizing that dancing was her dream and not her daughter's, Walsh took her kiddo out of ballet and started classes herself right away.

She had always loved to dance and developing her skills only led to more and more dancing.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

A teacher asked a great question about superintendent pay. Then, all hell broke loose.

Her earnest question about inequality in our education system was met with a grotesque abuse of power.


Why should a superintendent get a raise while teachers in the same district struggling to make ends meet see their paychecks flatline — year after year after year?

Teacher Deyshia Hargrave begged the question. Minutes later, she was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of a cop car.

The scene was captured below by YouTube user Chris Rosa, who attended a board meeting for Vermilion Parish Schools in Louisiana.

You can watch Hargrave begin speaking about 33 seconds in. The situation starts becoming contentious around 6:35 minutes. Hargrave is arrested at 8:35, and then walked outside in handcuffs and placed in the back of police vehicle.


Keep ReadingShow less



Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody has been covered dozens of different ways. But you've never seen it performed like this.

As one of the most iconic songs in rock music, Bohemian Rhapsody is recognizable no matter how it's done. As children, my brother and I used to belt out Galileos and Figaros in the backseat of our parents' Volkswagon whenever the song came on (yes, just like in Wayne's World). While other kids learned about Beelzebub in Sunday School, I learned about him from Queen's perfect harmonies. If there were an anthem from my classic rock-filled childhood, it would be Bohemian Rhapsody.

It's one of those songs that is hard to cover well, though it hasn't stopped people from trying. I've enjoyed some renditions, but nothing has caught my attention or delight more than this kapa haka version from New Zealand.

Keep ReadingShow less
via TheEllenShow / YouTube

Mark Wahlberg on "The Ellen Show."

Actor Mark Wahlberg recently attended a daddy-daughter dance with his 10-year-old, Grace. Sadly, Grace had no interest in seeing her father strutting his stuff on the dance floor.

"I didn't get one dance," Wahlberg told Ellen DeGeneres. "And I told her we were going to do the whole big circle and I was going to go off. And she said, 'Dad, if you embarrass me, I will never talk to you again.' But what she did do is she hung out with me."

No matter who your dad is, especially if you're a 10-year-old-girl, you have zero desire to see him dance in front of your friends.

But the parents at the dance probably would have had a blast seeing Wahlberg bust out some of his old-school '90s Marky Mark moves.

However, Wahlberg couldn't help but leave his mark on the music being played at the dance.

Keep ReadingShow less