Be Your Own Cheerleader.
How getting a degree in philosophy taught me to be my proudest supporter
You know that feeling when you totally crush whatever it is you have to do? I recently passed my thesis defense with such excellence that I earned extra points with my presentation, which means that I passed my master thesis with a slamming 90 out of 100. Yet, the feelings of accomplishment were owed to the struggle, more than the actual result.
The fact that the grade was not the impressive part, was evident from the reactions of those around me. It didn’t come anywhere near the personal excitement I felt. There was a stark contrast between the pride I took in this excellent achievement and the lack of astonishment in those who know me well. They were proud, of course, and happy for me. But you could just sense that they also somehow expected me to excel at this.
My grades have always ranged from good to excellent and over the years, I have gotten used to the typical ‘of course you did great’ kind of reaction. It has gotten to the point that I hesitate to tell fellow students my results because I know they will resent me for getting an 80 or 90, while I was complaining to them about how stressed out I was over the assignment. Yet, I really do stress out over the things that I excel at. More than people can begin to imagine.
I am not writing this to brag (although I hold no shame in bragging about how incredibly proud I am of myself, and I only hope this is infectious). I am writing this because I want you to feel proud of yourself, regardless of whether you are impressing others. I learned that the hard way.
The ‘perfect’ student
Ever since I can remember I was a very smart kid who was always told that I did great at school and studying. Since I have recently completed my journey as a student, I can now say that I managed to hold on to the giftedness of doing well at school. At least, of producing good grades.
When I started studying at the university, this proneness to doing well at studying started to slowly become part of my identity. I became the person who wanted to study for the rest of their life, who enjoyed excelling at school and exams and didn’t care too much for things that would distract from my studies. This would ultimately direct me at some kind of ambitious career I imagined — variating from CEO of google to prime-minister of the Netherlands.
I obtained those ridiculous goals when I got rejected by the academy of arts and figured that my journey would start at university. I figured that I wanted to ask questions, rather than listen to the answers, ergo, a bachelor in philosophy seemed to suit my academic quest for creativity. So, I applied to a university near me and started my philosophical path to ambitious job opportunities.
Pessimism made me crash
It didn’t take me long to figure out that a bachelor’s degree in philosophy is not an easy ticket into Google’s head offices or Dutch politics, or any high-level job opportunity for that matter. At last, a parallel remained between me and the art academy student I once wished to be: both of us lacked the slightest guarantee of finding steady, well-paid jobs.
Philosophy students joke about this all the time, pessimistically laughing away any conversational attempt like “so, philosophy huh, and … what exactly can you do with that?”.
Sure, philosophers know of many useful applications. The problem is, our philosophical ideas are often not that interesting to many outside the discipline, and not many people would like to pay for those ideas either (I would not mind drinking beer and talking about Kant’s third Critique in a shady pub on a salary, but I doubt that there is any revenue in that).
Am I too pessimistic about the philosophical opportunities the world has to offer? Probably, yes.
But the point is that I started to believe my own cynical answers to those courageous small talkers that dare to enter into a conversation on philosophy and job opportunities. I started to believe that this was how others would view someone who only had a degree in philosophy and I became convinced that if I wanted to come even anywhere near being the new CEO of Google, then I needed to do more and do better at things that showed that I had more potential, besides abstract discussions and philosophizing about life.
So, what did I do to elevate my resume to level ‘CEO of Large Company’ or ‘Head of Fancy Department of Important Things’?
Nothing.
Well, that is, nothing except stressing myself out over the entire course of my student years. Quite literally, because I ended up burning out at the age of 22, having to quit my research master’s degree in social and political philosophy because I spent all my time worrying about my future, about what I was doing, about what I wasn’t doing. Forgetting about what I wanted, what I enjoyed, and about how to care for myself, rather than my ambitions.
Goodbye cynicism!
I spend almost a full year trying to learn about being content with not being perfect, and proud of what I accomplished, to battle that big black hole in my career plans (and my resume), and the stress that it gave me.
Once I figured some of this stuff out, it became clear what kind of valuable things my ‘unimpressive’ academic studies in philosophy had actually thought me. And, how stupid I was to think that I needed to focus on all sorts of other things. I had been doing everything I wanted and was learning all the skills I needed to be creative, to learn how to think critically, and how to write those thoughts down in sentences that others could only dream of writing.
It was my own cynicism towards the value of what I was doing, that drove me to attempt unachievable goals, that made me think “see, I don’t have the skills to do all these things”.
But my not so gentle crash made me remember that I don’t actually care about a fancy job. All I want to do is read, write, and teach interesting things. Getting a degree in philosophy was the perfect choice to learn how to do those things.
In the end, the cure for my pessimistic outlook was not an incredible job opportunity to put on my resume. I needed a reminder that I should be proud of what I was already achieving.
The struggle is real
But being proud of yourself is easier said than done. Let alone if your track record of excellent grades means that everyone else is expecting you to pass all these challenges with great ease.
Personally, I’m better at describing abstract, metaphysical thoughts than telling my companions how incredibly hard it is to finish a master’s degree when you have to deal with mental health issues and the mess I had made by stressing and working myself into devastation. It is not always easy to see that people are struggling. This was definitely the case for me and my post-grad studies. Most people around me didn’t even know I was struggling to finish my degree.
They didn’t know, because every time a fellow student asked how I did on my paper, they probably figured that if I keep getting excellent grades then this must be a piece of cake for me. They didn’t see the effort I put in overcoming perfectionism, dealing with low energy, stress, and anxiety. All they saw was the grades that, luckily, I owe to my nerdy obsession with complex philosophical ideas and, I guess, my intelligence and writing.
But being a good student is not the equivalent of being a highly intelligent, full-on philosophy nerd. It is also finishing assignments on time, meeting the briefing, organizing and scheduling all your tasks, and then managing a personal life on top of that.
There is a difference between producing good results, and the effort and energy you put into doing so. But if others can’t possibly know what your achievements are actually worth, measured by the effort put into them, it can become hard to be proud of yourself in lack of any reminders that you should be.
Be proud
Which brings me to why I am writing this. When my supervisors told me that they thought I did so well on my thesis defense that they decided to up my grade, I was incredibly proud of myself. Not because of the grade, per se. But because it proved that my immense struggles to finish the damn thing on time and in a decently written way, didn’t cause me to fuck up the assignment, at all. I managed to destroy all the adversities that made my path so difficult, to totally crush the boss-level stage of my post-grad studies.
I felt like a badass. But most people couldn’t possibly (or fully) understand why. The point is that other people don’t know the shit you go through to accomplish your shit.
That doesn’t really matter, because the fact that we are aware of our own daily struggles, makes us very eligible for cheering ourselves on. Which is why it is our duty, being our own most excited cheerleaders, to make sure the team knows it is playing a monumental game.
So, next time you accomplish something great, or small, make sure you don’t forget to shake those pom-poms (figuratively, or not).
There is not always a squad to cheer you on. Nor is it always reasonable to expect others to do the cheering for you. Of course, it is always pleasant and sometimes even crucial to find support in those around you. But there’s also nothing wrong with being your own most proud supporter.
