How I learned to challenge myself and still be happy

“Lowered expectations mean that everybody’s happy.” This was the quote one of my best friends from high school chose as their senior quote. I’ve spent the last year (and then some) pondering this statement, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this statement is very far from the truth.

A year ago last week, I moved into my dorm on East Campus thinking that there was absolutely no way I was going to keep up here (academically, socially, really in any possible way). Before Duke, I had never really felt that achievement and involvement, both in class and in extracurriculars, were particularly celebrated. I had become accustomed to the standards of my small, insular New York City private school that kept the kids and aggressive parents happy without being terribly challenging. Most of the time when people told me I was intelligent or hardworking in any way, I simply thought they were brazenly lying to my face. I thought that there was little to be proud of in surpassing the low expectations that had been set for me before college. Having attended the same school for 13 years before Duke, I didn’t know any different. Slowly, I had grown accustomed to thinking that I wasn’t capable of performing at much of a high level because I had no idea what would be expected of me. This self-doubt morphed into a deep-seated defeatism: if I knew there was no possible good outcome from the efforts I was expending, why should I even try? Last year, I’d simply blame my own mediocrity on my prior environment; now, I blame myself much more.

Instead of being a ‘typical’ freshman and putting my name down for dozens of listservs, trying to place into more difficult classes and joining clubs (even if I weren’t going to continue with them past a few weeks), I may have signed up for a scant three things. My email inbox was never inundated with club and activity newsletters. Besides rowing—the only thing from last year that I think I tried at—I really wasn’t doing much at all outside of class.

One would think that because I was doing less outside of the lecture hall, I was doing better academically. Wrong. I had thought that since there was no way I was prepared for Duke, why bother wasting my time trying to do well? I’d say that the work that I did outside of many of my classes was simply a placebo: I’d do enough to convince myself that I tried at something so that if I did poorly on an exam or a paper I could tell myself “at least I tried.”

My personal brand became simply not caring too much about anything. Writing this now it sounds so irresponsible to think of, but I spent an entire semester having never gone to a library (or at least past the printers in Lilly). Today, I think I sold myself short in a big way.

I learned for the first time as a freshman about the Stanford Duck Syndrome: where there is an appearance of tranquility and competence on the surface, but a lot of paddling going on beneath the water. I was a very different type of duck, one that particularly enjoyed being passed out on a rock while all the other more hardworking and committed ducks raced by, all the while quietly decrying them as “working too hard.” And as the last day of classes approached, I woke up and realized that all the other ducks were about to paddle off over the horizon, and maybe it was best that I get in the water for once. This summer, I finally did.

There were a lot of simple things that I did to regain any sense of self-discipline, from going to bed earlier instead of watching Netflix to keeping my phone on Do Not Disturb for long periods of time. For me, the most shocking thing I did was actually read the books for my summer study abroad classes, something that the irresponsible freshman Andrew would never have done. In short, I raised my personal standards.

Somewhere in the past spring and summer, I realized that if I held myself to a high standard, I could still be happy—more so than if I met or exceeded the much lower bar I had held myself to very early on in my Duke career. Instead of thinking that I was incapable of ever doing very well in school, I decided that work shouldn’t be a placebo and that I should actually put in effort: academically, socially, and in my extracurriculars. Even from my first attempts at raising the bar that I held myself to (them being salvaging my second semester GPA and my summer classes), I was not only more incentivized and actually successful, but I was happier.