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| Nicole Fielder Class of 2019 |
Hi, my name is Nicole Fielder, and I
am a perfectionist.
There are two sides to the coin of
perfection, making it great for the inevitable interview question: “What is
your greatest weakness?” Playing the perfectionist card in that setting is
appealing because it’s often considered a strength that’s veiled enough to pass
as a weakness and land you a job. But I find myself on the negative side of
that coin more often than not. The prospect of attempting something and it not
turning out perfectly debilitates me, so much so that I couldn’t even write
this simple blog post for more than a week after the deadline. I had a laundry
list of completely viable blog topics and drafts staring back at me from their
well-ordered home on a Google document, but I scrapped all those because they
weren’t good enough. Because I’m not good enough.
College has shown me what my mom
meant when she chided me for identifying as a perfectionist, cautioning me
against the self-fulfilling prophecy inherent in that identification.
Perfectionism is really a phobia of failure; it causes us to shore up any
potential vulnerability so that we appear invincible. Thanks to excessive
testing in schools and deep-set societal values, we are taught to associate our
worth with our ability to perform. Nothing separates our perception of
ourselves from our creations, so any criticism of our work gets immediately
internalized. If we’re not up to par (even if only by our own standards), we
become ashamed, as if we are the ones who are deeply flawed. We get paralyzed
by fear. And this phenomenon is especially prevalent in females. A lovely TED
talk titled “Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection” addresses this issue
specifically, citing sources that demonstrate how women are taught to be
pristine while men are taught to be resilient. Failure is messy, and that fact
makes it only acceptable for men to experience. The TED speaker argues that we
should teach our girls bravery because in order to facilitate entrepreneurship,
ambition, and success. Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s a stepping
stone to it.
In the midst of one of my moments of
productivity paralysis, my friend shared a simple adage: “Don’t freeze in front
of the dragon.” When the pressure peaks and it feels as if your life is on the
line, don’t let the fear of making a wrong move stop you from making a move at
all. That’s how progress is made. That’s how things get done. It’s true that we
are defined by our actions, but action must exist for self-definition to be
possible. Perfectionists are right to believe that our work and our actions are
our identities, but we need to take action in order to find an identity. We
need to be brave.
Hi, my name is Nicole Fielder, I’m a
recovering perfectionist, and I’m learning what it means to be brave.
Nicole Fielder is a freshman McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville studying political science.