High Achievers

Obviously I am not talking about myself.

In the Midst of Finals, everyone on campus revealed their 'nerdiness' to everybody else. All the cafes are overcrowded with people buying coffees and energy drink to boost up their brain function. "All nighter" is the common answer for " How are you doing?", meaning staying up all night for studying.

Many of my peers came to me about not having enough confidence seeing that everybody else are excelling too. Mind you, this is Dartmouth, most of the people who got in are all high achievers, or so everybody else thinks. What happen to the other qualities that admission see in us? Aren't we somehow strive in our other areas such as leadership and artistic talents?

I wonder why people feel inferior around talented people. We are always competing with ourselves,not the others. Each of us has something to give, and if it is not academic, it would be something else. I tend to admire some of my talented peers but never make it an excuse to look down on myself. Why is there a need to condemn ourselves in this high institution that stress intellectual and humanitarian goals? Even thought we are people of color or non-American, that should not be a factor to be despair.

Instead to think of keeping everything to ourselves to avoid embarrassment (if there is), I find it better to put our ideas out there and welcome criticism. Most of the people here do not judge but provide different perspective to problems. The best thing of being students is that we are not compete with each other for survival, there are no cheating, power struggle or conspiracy involved in our learning process. Therefore why fear?

At the very same time as I was facing all this inferiority thoughts from my friends, I found the perfect article from a Dartmouth magazine. A black student from Pennsylvania got in to Dartmouth without receiving his friends' blessing. They thought that he never deserve Dartmouth's offer and thought he was only a factor of bringing diversity to the college. They overlook the fact that he is archieving too in high school and advised him not to be the "lowest of the cream". (Rather he should be the top student of an 'okay' college?!)His friends thought that he is going to Dartmouth to embarass himself by competiting with the best of the best. He was haunted by his best friends' "worry", he didn't do well in his first semester at Dartmouth. But as his grade slowly improved, he realized his own ability and become more apprieciative of the high education environment he is in.

"We are all here to learn, why does result matter as long we are learning?" True, if we learn with our whole heart, I do not think that the result will go any far away then our efforts put in. The learning process should be placed before the anticipation of the grade. Continue from the article, this black student graduated from Dartmouth and got admited to Havard as a graduate student. His friends must be embarrassed of even thinking that he is worthless of an Ivy League education.

Dear friends, if you are reading this, hope you are not pissing me off by saying you are not good enough for Dartmouth or anywhere else. You are selected or a reason, and don't even second guess the purpose of learning. It's never about competiting.