If you ever need evidence that the world can be cruel, I suggest you go looking for a street light. Look for the yellow, bulbous ones that buzz slightly and hardly illuminate anything except a narrow stretch of asphalt. Once you find it, look for the small swarm of insects flying in endless circles around that light. Remember them. They will stay there for hours on end, beating against the glass until the sun comes up or they lose the strength to fly. It is a small tragedy, I think, that something like a moth, whose lifespan is far shorter than my own, should waste even an hour chasing a light it will never reach.
As you know, job hunting season has returned to Duke, with vigor. Ties are being tied, adjusted and tied again. Smiles are being practiced and tweaked to look natural. Pens are flurrying across papers, recording names and emails, and clicking nervously in a thousand pockets. It’s all part of that great collegiate endeavor to secure the internship that just might be the springboard into a stable career. This isn’t specific to first semester; it happens all year round to some degree. However, this is the perfect time to examine the brand of “success” that the job hunting season espouses, while our workloads are still light and we have the cognitive space to think about greater things than midterms and naps.
I make the assumption that every Duke student is here because they ultimately want to be happy, fulfilled, or whatever word they choose, and they believe that finding the right career will contribute to that. Duke provides the resources and education that can get us to that career, and by extension, to happiness. Given this, there is something about the College-to-Career pipeline that disturbs me—an undercurrent of panic and desperation flowing below the shimmering surface.
Take consulting, for example. I have many friends who plan to do consulting work at some point, and several who intend to apply to firms this year. It’s difficult not to know someone who is involved. There are so many students going to interest meetings and preparing for case interviews that they seem to have developed their own collective gravity, drawing others to their ranks through popularity alone. Though no one explicitly says it, the culture implies that this is something competitive students do. Despite the time commitment, the extensive preparation and added stress, many students will participate because they think it’s necessary to succeed; a key first step on the stairway to happiness. It’s the same peer pressure they warned us about in high school, but the drug is affirmation instead of cigarettes.
I worry for those students who stop pursuing their passions and start chasing resume-builders. The reason is simple opportunity cost. Considering the amount of money we pay to attend a university like Duke and the brief four years we have here, every day is important. Yet, there are students spending precious time participating something that isn’t very precious to them. They could invest that time in their friendships, in the things they enjoy or in the activities that fit their interests and will grow them as a person. They are chasing success while neglecting the things that will actually make them happy.
I will tell them what I wish I could tell the moth: you are going to die.
It is so important that you understand this fact, that I’ll repeat it.
You are going to die.
Unlike the moth, which will live out its life in blissful ignorance, humans are cursed with introspection. There will come a day when you will look back at the end of your life and question why you spent your time as you did. You will scrutinize your life more thoroughly in your last days than you ever could when you still had time left. Do you really want to saddle yourself with the regret of knowing that even one hour was spent doing something just because other people were doing it? I urge you to kill that habit now. Leave it behind you, in that box with the shoes you bought for that interview you never would have gone to had all your friends not been doing the same thing.
Recognize that you are not defined by other people’s opinion of you, but by your opinion of yourself. It is literally life-threatening to believe otherwise, because then you will know nothing of yourself, except what others tell you. This type of thinking is the reason we fear interviews and other people’s assessments of us, because we don’t assess ourselves independently. We choose to be ignorant of what others think of us, rather than face the possibility of a flaw being uncovered and exposed. It is unhappy living life in fearful uncertainty.
We fret so greatly over the image we present to other people that we will do anything to “keep up” with others’ measurements of success and progress. We will talk to that consulting scout we didn’t want to talk to. We will apply for the internships everyone else wants because, well, everyone wants them. We conform. We acquiesce. We disappear. But what if we spent our time investing in ourselves, not only in our resumes?
Ask yourself who you want to be, not what you want to be. What changes do you want to see in yourself over the next several years, or even in this one? Would you like to be a better friend? Would you like to be a better student? Spend more of your time building up these things in yourself and less thinking about how you can keep up with others around you. Spend less time thinking about success, and you will find happiness waiting for you.
Ian Burgess is a Trinity sophomore. His column, “from the mountaintop,” runs on alternate Fridays.
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