-Ever since I was a kid, I was always EXPECTED to be the BEST out of everyone. I was used to people JUDGING every single aspect of what I do in my life, and how I feel about the things around me. I did not even have the liberty to set my own limits for my own potential.
Whether it be the running race I ran in first grade, the art competition I drew in fourth grade or the marks I got in my exam for ninth grade, I was always expected to come first in everything , but most of the time instead of achieving that high level of perfection I was expected to achieve, I always lost by a mark or two and became SECOND BEST.
This killed me from the inside! My mind could not take the fact that someone else was better than me and I could not strive to be as good as them. No matter how hard I tried I always managed to loose to the first ranker with just a margin of 1 or 2 marks. What killed me even more was that this first ranker I keep ranting about was none other than my best friend.
Competition, Desire, ambition, pressure, success and comparison what do all these things mean to me if I loose the most precious things of all that is 'friendship' and 'self-satisfaction'?
Yes, maybe my friend is better than than me at studies, but she can't narrate stories like me, draw like me and run like me, Can she?
She can't, but how come she got the opportunity to go to a career exposure program at a big art school instead of me? and how come she always gets every single opportunity to represent my school in any competition even though it's not her area of expertise?
Yes, she is a big overachiever, but I would have definitely benefitted more from that career exposure program which she barely even paid attention to.
Everyone talks about the problems OVERACHIEVERS FACE but no one talks about the problems that overachievers CAUSE.
Partiality, that is the reason why she was selected instead of me. This pre-made impression that all the teachers have on her that she is the perfect and meticulous student that can achieve anything and everything just because she gets good marks, that is what gives her opportunities that other people deserve more than her.
of course that isn't her fault, more than anything it's the educator's fault. I think all the educators that favor students just because of their academic potential should question themselves if they are doing the right thing by just throwing opportunities at a single child. Education is power, and so in this case educators are the most powerful humans that can make or break a child's life so it's up to them whether they want to change the life of an underachiever or continue praising the overachievers.
This was when I realized that all those years when I was trying to find the fault in me, I was searching for nothing but the unfair society which refuses to accept me as CABABLE!
I give dignity second place to expedience_ Jack Vance