October Issue

ARTS & LIFE 19
Anya Eland,
Contributor
Everyone is afraid of something: spiders, the
dark, commitment. As we get older, our fears
and perspectives change. As young adults, what
are some things UTSC students are afraid of?
Ghosts. Thunderstorms. Monsters under the
bed. The dark. These are just a small number
of fears that children tend to have. As kids, we
didn’t have to worry about practical things like
paying tuition or passing a major exam that
will affect our potential acceptance into grad
school. However, as students and young adults,
we develop a whole new set of fears. With
Halloween coming up, kids fear missing out
on the best treats on Halloween night or being
scared by their comrades in costume. For postsecondary
students, it’s the fear of failing at life.
First year students are starting a new chapter
in their lives which will introduce them to fears
that didn’t exist until now. The thought of not
being able to make friends, having to live away
from home for the first time, or even just the
sheer weight of university stress resting on your
shoulders can be terrifying.
“I wasn’t the best student in high school …
didn’t study for tests or exams, I just got by.
Now grades actually matter and it’s scary for
me to take that in,” says Amy Shortt, a first-year
journalism student at UTSC. No matter how
hard students work, there will be that voice in
the back of their heads implying that maybe
studying every night just won’t be enough. Once
that feeling of doubt creeps in, you can’t help
but notice your stress levels rocket.
For upper year students, their fears become
more concrete. The thought of graduating and
being thrown into the real world is scary to even
think about. Time flies so fast, and you don’t
even realize until you’re running out of it.
“I’m just scared I may fail at life in general
… I just want to be happy,” says Milcah
Sutanto, second-year student at UTSC whom
is specializing in Molecular Biology and
Biotechnology. Often times, students doubt
whether or not the program they chose is really
right for them.
“I just don’t want to feel like I’m not going
anywhere, like I’m stuck and not progressing
in life… not getting promoted or not going
somewhere greater than where I am,” says
Ashwinder Suden, a third-year student
specializing in Philosophy.
As we grow older, our fears come to dominate
our emotions, leading us to greater stress.
We’re always trying to prove ourselves - as well
as others - that we can be successful and that
we have what it takes.
According to an article, The Fear of Failure:
Understanding the Psychology Behind it,
from the South African College of Applied
Psychology, “The fear of failure is directly linked
to our self worth.”
“Failure is a part of life; nobody’s perfect and
we all go through challenges and obstacles. By
making our self-worth contingent on categories
such as academic success, appearance or
popularity, we fail to value ourselves solely for
the fact that we are human beings and accept
that failure is part of the human experience, ”
states Professor Marvin Covington.
Students develop these more complex fears
because they stem from reality and reflect
things we face day-to-day. Making the transition
from childhood to adulthood, and retrospecting
accordingly, we realize that we are now
more independent and have to take on more
responsibility than we did when we were young.
“Fears like failure and the future are a lot more
serious than the dark or the basement because
it is possible for them to come true,” says Short.
We each learn that the things we feared as
children, like monsters for example, cannot
affect our lives the way not getting a job in order
to make a living does.
Students are constantly stressed about school,
and school can feed into our fear of failure and
uncertainty in life. We have to learn how to
create different methods for ourselves to face
our fears and motivate us to take risks.
“Always intensively plan ahead to face those
obstacles; don’t procrastinate … face it head
on,” says Sutanto. There is absolutely no doubt
that it is terrifying to face your fears, but when
we learn to face our fears, we learn more about
ourselves and grow stronger. To face a fear is
to take a risk, and we often convince ourselves
that the outcomes of our risks will be terrible.
“It’s not as scary as we think. The way it is in
our imagination is almost always worse than
it actually is,” says Shortt. “Facing your fears
helps you grow emotionally and grow a sense
of self,” says Sutanto. Once that fear is faced,
there is a sense of relief knowing that we’ve just
achieved something great.
At the end of the day, we must all learn how to
face our fears and just go with the flow. It’s how
we learn who we are and how we can grow into
successful individuals. As we go through life,
we come across more challenging obstacles
on the way to our goals, but fear should never
take over. Aristotle once said, “You will never
do anything in this world without courage.” That
goes to show that the wise ancients agreed that
with enough power, perseverance, and bravery,
anything can be conquered.
www. the-underground.ca OCTOBER 2017
VOLUME 37, ISSUE 02