The Stress of Never Doing Enough

In grade school, most students are stressed from the piles of homework or their fear of the other sex at the next school dance. Then, you go to college and freshman year is filled with stress from trying to balance all the different aspects of your new independence. The parties, the classes, everything is fresh and new. But then sophomore year starts, and a whole new kind of stress sets in.

Step Up Your Game

No longer can you tell people that you don’t have a job because you’re “settling into college”. Not only that, but everyone is expecting you to magically land internships at major companies. Just handling all of your major classes and remembering to shower on a daily basis is already a challenge for most students. The post-college job market has gotten harder every year, and students are feeling the pressure. Employers want to see years of experience and sophomore year is often when students are expected to land the right internships for their field.

The Cycle: There Will Always Be Someone More Successful

All this leads to a constantly stressed-out sophomore who feels like she will never be doing enough. The cycle begins when you first feel the onset of worry. You start to ponder what level of success you want to have in your career, and then you suddenly realize you better start now to reach it. So suddenly you find yourself applying to every internship you can find and your stress deflates. After receiving your next position at a job or organization, you feel great. But the feeling only lasts for a quick moment. You feel successful and productive, and then you find out that another person your exact age just sold their company to Google. And then cycle begins again. It’s a real humbling year where you have to realize that no matter how many times you circle through the same cycle of stress and anxiety, someone will always be more successful than you. 

Different Paths for Different People

Why do we compare ourselves to people who have taken completely different paths to us? For example, I want to go into startup marketing. So why do I compare myself to the person who just sold their company to Google? I don’t have any desire to start my own company, yet I feel unaccomplished when I hear about it. I think much of this has to do with our concept of "successful". In today’s age, selling your company to Google or creating the next Facebook is society’s unit of success. My age has grown up on The Social Network and years of Steve Jobs movies. These are the people we have grown to idolize without realizing the exceptionalism that took place in these stories. Ultimately, each of these leaders took a different route and we should expect the same for our careers. 

I will have my own story and path to what I will define as successful. And while I am sure I will still have periods where I am #stressed out, I know that these will be crucial learning periods to my success. So many leaders of today don’t even think about comparing themselves to others, so why do we?

This post was written as part of the #Stressed series, which is tied to LinkedIn’s student editorial calendar. Follow the stories here or write your own.