Making the Grade

When we were growing up, my brother and I had sharply divergent ways of approaching school.  I sweated and hyperventilated over every assignment from first grade on up. I had an unrelenting fear that I would forget to do a project or study for a test.  On occasion, I would get up in the middle of the night -- roused from sleep by the force of my own anxiety -- to pad downstairs and rifle through my backpack to make sure that I hadn't forgotten to complete some minor bit of homework.  I lived in a state of panic. 

Humanities and social science courses were my strong suit, so I was usually comfortable that I would get A's as long as I did all the work and studied to a reasonable degree; but in math and chemistry and the like, I spent days figuring out exactly what I had to get on the tests to maintain a perfect GPA. If I received anything less than a 95 on an exam, I had a massive anxiety attack and then begged for extra credit and redoubled my efforts.

My brother, on the other hand, would take five minutes toward the end of the semester and dash off a calculation of what it would take for him to get an A versus a B in any class where he was somewhere in between.  He almost always determined that an A would require far too much effort, so he'd shrug, close his textbooks, and spend the rest of the evening talking on the phone to his girlfriend or playing Kings Quest on the computer.

I wish someone had pulled me aside back then and whispered in my ear, "Psst.  You're both going to end up in the same place.  Take it easy."  Sure, for my trouble, I got a few plaques and a teensy bit of scholarship money, and every now and again I can mention on my blog (to zero effect) that I was valedictorian; but I nearly gave myself a stroke in the process, and here we are now:  both lawyers at New York firms; both happily married; both living in comfortable homes. 

Despite our long-running standardized test rivalry (I did better on the SAT; he bested me on the LSAT), which one could argue proves we're evenly matched in terms of brain power, the clear conclusion to be drawn is that my brother's plain smarter than I am.  It just didn't take him that much effort to do well enough in school and then very well in life. 

Of course, it's kind of a cosmic joke in this whole thing that, as New York law firm types, we both work our butts off.  My brother was so relaxed for so many years, and now he's one of the hardest working people I know. And I obsessed all those years -- even in college, I melted down when I got a B+ -- so that I could...obsess over work.

I mean, I'm glad that I wasn't ambitionless or apathetic as a teenager.  And it's not as though I had no life outside of school -- I spent hours a day in ballet class (and my achievements as a dancer, incidentally, are far more important to me than those shown on my report cards). I don't have some overarching regret about how my life has turned out -- I like my job just fine even though, like most lawyers, I frequently wonder what things would be like if I'd taken a different path.   

I guess it's something that they don't talk about in school, something that my brother understood instinctually -- that overachieving, it turns out, only nets more achievement.  Or at least more expectations of achievement.  You establish yourself as a good, hard worker, and you're given...more work, more responsibility.  You show that you are efficient, so you're given...more work to complete (in less time).  Which, in the workplace, yields actual rewards -- mostly financial, some intangible (the old pat on the head, the slender pleasure of the job well done) -- as opposed to a flat gold star. 

I don't object to working, or even working hard, of course. I've tried the not-working gig (see: leave of absence to study acting), and it drove me nuts far more than the daily march to the office ever could.  There's no question that the whole work ethic and goal-orientation and drive to succeed are ingrained in my DNA as much as my red hair and freckles, and in that way this life suits me.

In the end, though, it's the sense of balance that makes the difference (again, my big brother got it right long before I did).  For me, it was usually One Big Thing, and that One Big Thing merited the same laser-like focus as my schoolwork did:  in high school, I had ballet; in college, I had the crew team; in law school, I had...uh...wine tasting (ok, so my grade obsession kind of backed off for those three years). 

Now, I don't have one big thing (which sometimes leaves me feeling like I have no passion, but it also means I'm not being absolutely consumed, as I was with ballet), but I have running and spending time (or at least emailing) with friends and writing and walking the dog in the park and lounging on the couch with my husband.  I don't shirk my responsibilities at work, but I make sure that I have time for these things.  Because they keep me sane, and without them I'm still waking up at 2am in a cold sweat, checking my briefcase and BlackBerry to make sure I haven't neglected some work assignment.   

More so than ever before, I feel like my life is about the connections I make with people and the little things that bring me happiness far more than it is about meeting some vaunted standard or getting an "excellent!" on my work product.  And in that sense, all that hard work has finally paid off. 

Comments

[CraigNY]

The philosophy has a name that Stacey has forbidden me from sharing with our son when he gets older: "Shoot for the B". It will be my runaway national bestseller self-help book. If you shoot for the B and get an A, then you got the same reward you would have gotten had you put in an A effort. And if you get a B? No disappointment! After all, you were just shooting for the B. There's another name for this overall philosophy: "Being European".

[Mauigirl52]

I think I was more like your brother. I'm a procrastinator and always did my work at the last minute all through high school and college.

I knew I'd met my soul mate when I met my husband...one night after a few glasses of wine we were talking about college (both of us went to well-respected schools) and he said "Did you ever wonder how well you might have done if you'd actually tried?" because he too had the same relaxed attitude about school and life.

This attitude has carried over into my work life. While I care about my job and try to do my best, I am not the person who will give up a vacation, or for that matter, her evening, for work. Because the company would get rid of me the second they no longer found me useful. And in the end, as they say, no one ever wishes on their deathbed that they spent more time at work!

[orangepeacock]

I was the driven, frantic student throughout public school, but after a series of nasty breakdowns, hospitalizations, and subsequent diagnosis, I switched to a philosophy more like Mauigirl's. I don't think I've perfected the art of the slack, since my SO is the pinnacle of this - he never cracks a book, pulls things together with a minimum of effort at the last minute, gets things done primarily by sucking up, and will be graduating with some serious honors next week and then getting his MA a year from now. So I have a ways to go, as my grades suck and I mostly stress myself to pieces over how crappy I am at life in general.

Aaaanyway, I'm reading this interesting book called "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters." It's along the lines of those irritating Times Sunday pieces that have been circulating, about the phenomenon of "supergirls," except a little less irritating and written with an eye towards eating disorders, feminism, and so on. It has its annoying patches, but on the whole it's pretty interesting and I think it strikes a more realistic balance between "Alpha Girls" and "Reviving Ophelia."

[fats]

I relate so much to this post. Sometimes I feel like you and I are very different, but other times I feel like we're exactly the same. In this case, we're exactly the same. Craig's "Shoot for the B" philosophy gives me a nauseous feeling - just thinking about it now, I'm feeling sick. Even though I see that we've come out in the same exactly place (actually, he's doing better than I am) - despite my better grades, my better credentials (law school, law review, big firm experience), he's more successful and making more money than I am, and probably a more relaxed person as well. Yet I still can't embrace his way of life and the thought of Hunter "shooting for the B" gives me the willies. How sick is that? Will I ever be able to let go of my overachieving nature?