Fear of Failure

“Anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services” according to an in-depth article in the New York Times last week. The author, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, asks the question “why are more American teenagers than ever suffering from anxiety?” The article is long, and worth reading in full; I will highlight two of the reasons mentioned.

The first is fear of failure. And it’s not about over-protective helicopter parents. The pressure to exhibit success seems strongly internally driven. How can one get ahead in today’s hyper-competitive world? How does one not fall behind? The rat-race starts young. Nobody wants to look stupid, lacking or slacking. Well, it might look cool to be slackin’ if you’re also acing life. But the “look” might be exacerbating the problem, which leads to the second reason: constant access to social media. The almost instantaneous feedback loop has supercharged the urgency of maintaining one’s look. At first it may be conscious, but soon it becomes embedded in the subconscious – an agitation difficult to pin down, that in its worst scenarios leads to destructive behavior, seemingly senseless.

I’ve noticed increased anxiety in my students over the past five years, compared to the cohort from 10-15 years ago. Getting a C on an exam feels like a permanent mark changing the dream of a bright future into failing at life. Grade inflation has not helped. Neither does the rapid social media chatter extolling the high-GPA student who landed the scholarship, who was admitted into the top medical schools, who has life made. I’ve also noticed an uptick of students who want to assure me that their grade on the most recent exam doesn’t reflect their desire to learn or to persevere. The first few times I thought the students were just being conscientious. Now I wonder if it’s part of image management. They care what I think; but I’m no longer sure this is a good thing.

As a first-year student academic adviser, I see the fear of failure more prominently in the most accomplished first-year students. These are the ones who made the academic honor roll in high school, captained sports teams, were presidents of co-curricular clubs, and logged more hours volunteering in four years than I have in forty (shame on me, perhaps). I look back on my own life and my nonchalance about the lowering of my academic class standing. I was a top student in second and third grade and then just slowly slid down the hill, ever so slightly every year. I honestly don’t remember what I thought about this. It seems like a distant foggy memory. When a student advisee is freaking out in my office over that C in calculus, I try to calmly paint the long-term picture. That C does not define you, and this incident will seem insignificant in the future. It is unclear if those words have any effect.

Failure can be a key activator to learning – so long as the fear does not overwhelm. You are unlikely to accomplish anything significant if you are unwilling to work on difficult things that require perseverance, and yes, failure time and again. It is far easier to distract yourself and check your social media accounts instead of doing the concentrated hard work of learning. Yes, learning is hard – especially since what we are being taught in school is biologically secondary, and therefore requires the effort. Nor have our ancient brains evolved to sufficiently compensate for the lightning-speed distraction of our Internet-connected smart phones.

If college students today limited their social media significantly, I wonder if we would see a reduction in anxiety levels. If they were able to block out distraction-free focused time to concentrate on mastering something difficult, I wonder if the satisfaction that comes with accomplishment through perseverance will lead to less anxiety. If I checked my e-mail less often, and blocked off time to focus on my craft as a teacher – working deeply on the difficult stuff instead of shallow-level “coming up with assignments for my students” – I wonder if I would be a much better teacher. If I took some distraction-free time to think deeply about the complex questions in my research, I wonder if I would avoid shallow mucking around the edges. Is it because of fear of failure in the rat-race of academia? I’m not a rat. Why should I care if someone is moving the cheese around?