Alice Vol. 5 No. 2

I
f you pulled out your laptop right now and looked up “how to
be successful while in college,” you’d get 29 pages of articles
by so-called experts listing strategic plans that, if followed to
a “T,” end in instant success. Sadly, it’s not that easy.
“I think success is kind of something everyone has to define for
themselves, but for me, it’s just that I’m consistently accomplishing
my goals,” said Mallory Maza, a junior double majoring in biology
and political science at The University of Alabama.
“To me, it’s just being able to do something that I am happy to
do,” said Carey Hodovanich, a junior double majoring in math and
dance at UA.
No matter what success may look like to you, it takes time to
achieve, and not every path to it is linear.
Take Tiffany Haddish, for example. Before she was snatching
trophies and making history as the first African-American standup
comedian to host Saturday Night Live, Haddish was homeless
and living in her car. It wasn’t until she got a little help from
comedian Kevin Hart that she started to see success in her career.
Her big break in entertainment didn’t come until she was cast in
the 2017 box office hit Girls Trip. The film made over 100 million
dollars and solidified Haddish as one to watch.
Now at 40, Haddish has become a household name, covering a
plethora of magazines including Times, W, and Glamour, writing
a New York Times bestselling autobiography, and starring in her
own comedy special on Netflix called Black Mitzvah and the TV
series The Last OG alongside Tracy Morgan.
While fundamentally we all know that it takes time to be
successful, in a society dominated by social media, millennials
have been subjected to the influx of “influencers,” like Loran
Gray, Emma Chamberlain, Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul, who
miraculously seem to become viral sensations and garner a level of
wealth and fame so quickly that many are left wondering how and
why it hasn’t happened to them.
College students’ aspirations have become unachievable,
not because the goals themselves are unattainable, but because
the time frame in which they seek to achieve them is simply
unrealistic. They begin to rank their success in correlation with
others, thus creating short-term timelines for accomplishing
lifelong achievements while still in their 20s.
That isn’t to say that amazing achievements can’t be made in
your 20s; Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Zendaya, Andrew Kozlovski
and many more would beg to differ. The only difference is we see
these successes through a social media lens narrowing our views
to the wonderful outcomes and not the months of struggle and
hardship behind said success.
Without taking how arduous and long the journey to success
may be into consideration, millennials have begun to develop
unrealistic and unhealthy expectations for success.
“I believe when we hold kind of those hardline expectations for
ourselves that [it] really sets us up for failure and disappointment,
because rarely does life go the way we expect it to,” said Greg
Vander Wal, executive director of The University of Alabama’s
counseling center. “It can lead to perfectionism. It can lead to
disappointment, which can contribute to more anxiety or feeling
down and having things like depression.”
According to the American Institute of Stress, the U.S. Census
Bureau reported that in 2017, of the 18 million students enrolled
in college in the U.S., nearly three out of four students have
experienced a sense of “overwhelming anxiety” at some point.
Adulthood is already stressful enough. As college students are
somehow expected to juggle full course loads, extracurriculars,
and, for some, part-time or full-time jobs. However, the added
stress of achieving success early on puts a strain on making quick
and substansial progress in their personal or professional lives.
“I think a lot of the times anxiety rises out a situation when we
feel threatened, when we feel like something is in jeopardy, and
oftentimes with anxiety, that’s about future possibilities, things
that we feel like we have to accomplish and aren’t accomplishing
or it’s not going the way we thought it would,” Vander Wal said.
Success is different for everyone, but it is apparent that success
doesn’t equate to much if you’re always overwhelmed and unhappy.
“I think everyone thinks that they need to have a husband, a
baby, and a house by like 24 or 30, and by like 30, if people aren’t
married, they really start stressing out,” Maza said.
Hodovanich said she admires her mother’s contentment in her
career. After receiving her undergraduate degree and a law degree,
her mother decided that she was much happier being a substitute
teacher.
Vander Wal said flexibility and self-compassion in situations
where things go wrong is important.
“I think sometimes we think we have to be in control of things
we ultimately can’t be, and learning to accept that can be helpful,”
Vander Wal said.
Spring 2020 43