I must confess that when I earned my first B in high school, it was an earth-shattering moment. It’s a sign, I thought, I’m not going to succeed in life. Who was I to ever think I was? Dramatic, I know, but it was indeed the world I was living in and many other students are living in it too.
This, my friends, is what we call academic validation: when a student comes to rely on their academics to feel recognized and appreciated. It’s a good feeling, but when it leads to an unhealthy obsession, academic validation can become debilitating. It eats at a student’s brains, planting seeds of excessive doubt and worry.
My struggle with academic validation began in high school when I realized I spent so much time achieving perfect grades, I hadn’t thought of my future career in any way. Although I’ve managed to loosen this grip a little in college, the craving of validation is still all-consuming. I’ve noticed a lot of my peers here at Milligan deal with relatively the same issue, feeling as if their worth is dependent on their academic success.
Junior Bernice Luquin described her experience with academic validation as an addiction that eventually leads to burnout.
“Getting perfect grades and compliments (especially from authority) is an intoxicating feeling,” she said. “It feels like a ‘high’, an adrenaline rush.”
But, when that well of compliments runs dry, or you don’t achieve that A, you begin to tear down your self-esteem and convince yourself you’re not good enough to make it. You hit the lowest of lows, and with nothing else to turn to, you’re forced to get back up again. It’s a vicious cycle that targets your self-worth not only as a student but as a human being.
Academic validation has its perks. I’ve completed some of my best work under the need to be perfect. For others, this constant seeking of approval can bolster a student’s determination. But how do you know when academic validation starts becoming toxic?
Dr. Christine Browning, director of the counseling center at Milligan University, says the first step is to determine if your need for validation is intrinsic or extrinsic. In other words, whose approval are you trying to get?
“If you’re trying to excel in college for yourself, that’s intrinsic and tends to be more healthy,” she said. “But if you’re trying to be perfect at college because you’re seeking approval and acceptance from others, that’s extrinsic, which leads to a toxic mindset.”
For clarity, intrinsic validation is saying “I gave it my best, and just because I did worse than I intended doesn’t mean I’m a failure.” Notice how it carries a lot less pessimism? There’s not a lot of room for degrading or self-contempt.
In our achievement-obsessed society, academic validation can become your total existence. This, as Dr. Browning notes, is a hint that validation is harming your ability to be rational.
“The ‘should haves’ and ‘could haves’ start pouring in,” she said. “If academic validation is your only source for self-fulfillment, you’re in a bad place.”
Students in this negative loop drown themselves in work in order to get the positive reinforcement they’re looking for. This often takes the form of neglecting one’s mental health, and sometimes even physical health.
“It can be so draining,” said Luquin. “I’ve lost count of the times that I practically worried myself to death and overworked, all at the expense of my well-being.”
A student’s craving for academic validation often stems from a fear of failure and rejection. For some of us, our self-perception is skewed or blurry due to our childhood experiences. In my personal experience, being invalidated and rejected as a child has made me vulnerable to being dependent on other people’s opinions.
“This is actually the case for many students who struggle with this particular issue,” said Dr. Browning. “I encourage students to go after the seed. Ask yourself: why am I seeking this validation so aggressively? The thing with trauma is that we try to control the results, and that’s not possible.”
Dr. John Paul Abner is a professor of Psychology at Milligan. He encourages students to think about the benefits of becoming lifelong learners.
“It is usually better to get a B in a class where you learn a lot versus an A in a class where you did not learn anything,” he said. “Think about graduate school where the learning is so much more important than the grade.”
Overcoming the obsession with academic validation isn’t easy, nor do I think it’s meant to be. All of us have an innate desire to be validated, and as a college student this feeling is magnified. We are all our own worst critics. As a human being, your worth is not dependent on your grades or how much you accomplish; college is meant to help you become a stronger intellectual. Don’t sacrifice your well-being for unsustainable academic validation.
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