Image by flickr user simplyla/ Creative Commons licensed
Let’s face it-a lot of us in graduate school are perfectionists. I could go a step farther and argue a lot of us made it into graduate school in part because of our perfectionism. Graduate school is exactly the kind of environment where perfectionism thrives. There’s a constant striving to tackle our significant workloads without error and folly. There’s the pressure to publish well and often. There’s the pressure to do something that’s never been done before. We’ve got lots of people counting on us-students, colleagues, professors-and of course, those same people are constantly watching us and will know when we’ve screwed up. Comparing ourselves to others is, like biting nails, a bad and nervous habit that we could quit if we only could relax a little.
For some, perfectionism is motivation, speeding them onward through their tasks. For others-like me, I admit-perfectionism is a bully, a roadblock, a kind of paralysis. I’m struggling with it now, as I write this post, willing myself to keep my fingers tapping on the keys, willing myself not to reach up to the backspace key and delete everything I’ve just written, willing myself to stay seated for now, willing myself not to get up from my desk with a faint resolve to work on this later, when I have better ideas.
In a way, I could point to my background in creative writing for my perfectionism and all the poor work habits that have come with it. Before I moved to rhetoric and composition, I spent much of my high school and undergraduate years, as well as four years of graduate school, studying poetry. Day and night were devoted to pouring over short lines and contemplating the best ways to make expressions as pithy and brief as possible. I became highly skilled in attacking tiny pieces of text, exhaustively searching them for flaws, writing and rewriting and rewriting the lines. I was terrified of writing a bad poem, and my terror grew unmanageable. I was only able to produce the poems I absolutely needed for class. Eventually, the poems stopped altogether.
I carried this perfectionism-disguised as writer’s block-with me to my doctoral program. I managed to produce decent enough writing for my courses, but it was agonizing. Trying to sound eloquent, original, and grad-school smart in a brand-new discipline resulted in panic attacks in my office in the middle of the day. I remember the day I finally went to the psychiatrist-I was sitting in my bedroom at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, on the phone with my mother, crying uncontrollably because I was too agoraphobic to walk into the kitchen to get cereal.
Medication and therapy helped me become functional again, but perfectionism continued to reign. When the time came for my comprehensive exams, I still wasn’t in any shape to write volumes of academic prose in a timed environment. So I delayed. And delayed. And delayed. I sunk into a deep depression. When it became clear I couldn’t delay any more, and I finally surrendered myself to the first part of the exam process. I wrote, but as I wrote, a broken tape droned on in my head: This is the worst thing you’ve ever written, you are a hack, everyone will know that you are an impostor, prepare to be thrown out of the program. I was so worked up that I began to hallucinate bugs were crawling in my hair, and that a killer was following my car as I drove around aimlessly at four a.m. During the second part of my exam, I felt like I was trapped in some kind of hermetically-sealed chamber of suffering, unable to carry on normal conversations with anyone, unable to enjoy anything at all. Thinking of my exam made me feel sick; sitting down to work on it for even fifteen minutes required Herculean effort. I felt as though I wasn’t really even breathing. I was dead on my feet.
The comprehensive exam process in my program takes approximately six to eight months. Mine took two and a half years. And yet, I passed my exams with distinction. My writing earned effervescent praise from my professors. I felt elated but dazed, drained, and broken. Was it worth it? I seriously considered leaving academia to seek out a different space, one that didn’t encourage my perfectionism. But I realized just that-that it was my perfectionism, my problem, and that it would follow me no matter where I went.
I wish I had some wiser things to say about perfectionism. I wish I had some “hacky” tips that I could pass on to readers that could make the bad parts of perfectionism disappear like a bad dream. The truth is, I may never be able to shake the kind of pathological perfectionism that has gripped me over the course of my graduate school career. For me, perfectionism is ultimately a question of how much I love what I do versus how much I’m willing to suffer for it. And, I’ve learned, it’s a question of how much I care about my own well-being versus how much I’m willing to change in order to survive.
Right now I’m approaching the fabled dissertation, my biggest-yet hurdle to getting the PhD, and also my last. I am well-aware that this could break me for good. But I’m learning, very slowly, that I’m at my best when I’m excited about what I’m doing, when I have energy, when I’m not suffering for some vaguely-defined understanding of what it means to be perfect in all of these new endeavors. I’m learning that perfection isn’t necessary. I’m learning that being my best is probably good enough, and good enough is worth striving for.
I’m glad that you are aware enough to recognize the problem as perfectionism (and not “writer’s block), and smart enough to realize that you do not need to do it alone. I’m in the midst of my own perfectionism, also wondering whether or not I can make it in academia (I recognized myself in some of what you were saying). Except for this is actively interfering with what I produce even with the amount of time I take. I hope you (we) get to the point someday where we realize that “perfection” is an aesthetic; it is subjective and not always necessary. Good luck!! And thanks soooo much for writing this (I’m sure there are many people out there who appreciate the fact that you are bravely writing about this, not hiding it).
Thanks for sharing your experience open and frankly. Parts of it are all too familiar.
[…] can attest to a similar personality trait. Sadly this tends to go along with the perfectionism that Julie talked about last week. Control is important, we need to be able to balance a number of lives as grad students, maintain […]
What an honest post, written from the heart, upfront, bold and timely – for so many of us, not only grad students but academics in general. You are a brilliant writer and clearly a great person!
Thank you so much for sharing this. Your honestly is a comfort, as I completely identify with your story from everything to having panic attacks to endlessly deleting and reworking sentences. Perfectionism almost ruined my life as well as my PhD, but like you I am working on accepting my best efforts rather than always trying to reach some vague and possibly unattainable higher standard. The irony about all this is, as perfectionists, our basic standards are usually more than good enough, it’s simply our perception of them that’s warped. Right now, I’m trying to start every day with the mantra ‘I am a fallible, but good enough person, exactly as I am now’. Best of luck to you.
[…] you have true writer’s block or struggle with perfectionism, hitting that delete button can be both terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. As […]
This was a real relief for me to read. I am also a PhD student, a perfectionist, and obsessed with a sense of personal inferiority much like the one you describe above. I’m terrified to publish because of it. I hope we can all find some way to let our excitement for our fields win out over these personal demons …
[…] continuously trying to live up to everybody’s expectations: our supervisors’ expectations, our perfectionism-induced expectations of ourselves, while trying to meet the demands of students, a family and […]
[…] you who are perfectionist workaholics like me (i.e. anyone who related to Julie’s post on the perils of perfectionism), relaxing can be one of the most difficult things in the […]
I was 7 years into my PhD program before I acknowledged that I was a perfectionist and that perfectionism was massively holding me back.
I endorse the “good enough” mantra but I cannot honestly say that I can use it on myself – it only works if I hear it from someone else.
I’ve been diagnosed and treated for ADHD. I had a therapist/coach to help me improve my productivity.
But the one technique that helped me most with my perfectionism, procrastination, and inability to take my own advice was scheduling Writing Dates with a core group of others working on their dissertations. (See Rachel Toor’s 2008 article in CHE, “The Writing Date”).
I honestly don’t think I’d have finished my dissertation without these dates. I still make dates – new projects, new cities, new writing partners – and wouldn’t trade them for anything.
[…] you who are perfectionist workaholics like me (i.e. anyone who related to Julie’s post on the perils of perfectionism), relaxing can be one of the most difficult things in the […]
[…] you who are perfectionist workaholics like me (i.e. anyone who related to Julie’s post on the perils of perfectionism), relaxing can be one of the most difficult things in the […]
Wow. You just walked me through my own exam experiences. Although you have expressed a desire to offer more than you have offered in this post, knowing that you passed with distinction calms my nerves enough to know I should just “push through.” My perfectionism has been so debilitating that I have occasionally not shown up for exams. That bad. And my grades have always been high save those times that I was so debilitated by my personal expectations that I couldn’t think/work. I’m ever amazed at the ease with which we succumb to the power we have over ourselves while simultaneously lacking the control to harness it to overcome our difficulties.
[…] J., 2012. The perils of perfectionism. GradHacker. 27 February 2012. Available from: <http://www.gradhacker.org/2012/02/27/the-perils-of-perfectionism/> [12 May […]
Julie,
Thank you so much for your honest post. I can relate to so much of what you’ve said here. Perfectionism is just accepted as a way of life in academia, and it need not be. As teachers, I think we have to do what we can to discourage it in our students. But, as far as our own perfectionism goes, I feel it will be a long and difficult battle. Here’s hoping we both make it to the other side of our doctorates with our sanity (relatively) in tact!
Best wishes,
Shyane