Random | Peer Pressure & Perfectionism

I used to grow up in a competitive environment. There are lots of reasons. Actually, most Chinese are familiar with that. Starting with high expectation from family, then the competition of limited spots for high-quality education, followed by tough peer pressure from all around throughout the middle school period; once receive the entrance ticket to the dream university after the extremely intense Abitur, you’ll find no ending for anxiety of pursuing the perfection in life.

In 2011, I was lucky to start my study in one of the best high schools in southern China, which has a high reputation for the inclusiveness, diversity and fairly high grades in mainstreamed education based on examinations. Even though I entered the school with pretty good grade, I was still overwhelmed by the peer pressure there.

The high school I studied in, photo from Internet.

Well, since I was sort of good at studying back then, the peer pressure was from all the other sides, which I’d never expected. I’ve known the high school gathered all the top brilliant students all over the province and I could totally foresee the stress from study. However, I was impressed so much that these brilliant teenagers could also take care of their hobbies and have a good depth in all these fields.

One of the best parts in this school is that there are nearly 50 clubs covering different fields that students are interested in, basically everyone could find somewhere to fit in and get the hobbies developed. For example, there are communities varying from literature, music, dance, art, science, comics, debate, politics, history, sports, language and so on. To be honest, this kind of equipment in high school is also quite rare in China. After all, not many public schools could receive such a large amount of funding in developing such free platforms for middle school students. I am still very grateful to everything I gained from all these opportunities.

Based on my interests, I joined in the Model UN, the poetry club and even a band in the fresh year. I spent most of my spare time on these student organisations, and harvested a bunch of great friends there. I was inspired and learned a lot from these friends, who proved practical demonstration of “Other people’s kids”.

For example, a group of students from the Film Club, they wrote, directed, acted, shot and edited a film produced entirely by themselves. That’s probably the first student-made film in China. They even made it as DVD and sold it among other high schools in Guangzhou. The film’s editor was my senior who has great perfectionism (which also influenced me significantly in other ways), and I have watched him process scenes of video footage over and over again. Another interesting fact, my roommate who was part of the Film Club, is now studying Film Production in London.

The poster of the film, from the internet.

They made me realise that hobbies could be brought up to such a professional level, and not just for amateur pastimes. The passion made them brave enough to try out crazy ideas, and the perfectionism with high standard pushed them to implement and achieve the ideas to a new level. What also mattered but I didn’t realise back then is the positive motivation due to the Matthew effect, which is the positive feedback from accumulated advantages, contributed to the peer pressure that pushed me so hard for the following years. But that’s another story.

In China’s mainstream secondary education environment where “Academic performance is the most important”, most of people are burying their heads in the books, staring at a goal of “getting a good college entrance exam for dream colleges”. However, the strong atmosphere at my alma mater, where hobbies were fostered in a non-utilitarian way, gave me a broader perspective as a teenager at the time and an earlier recognition of the importance of a diverse and inclusive evaluation system. A valuable learning environment like this stems from an excellent student source & from the forward-thinking educational philosophy and rich educational resources of this school, both of which are indispensable.

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However, everything has two sides.

Just think about you staying with a bunch of peers who are already sort of experts on various fields. There is of course no harm regardless of comparison. It could not be just a little bit stressful. When peer pressure reaches a certain level, it brings about an effect other than positive motivation.

I realised something at the time: In all the different fields I can comprehend, there may already be the same group of peers who have reached heights that I could or could not have imagined. Such people with abilities far beyond their peers are probably more common than I thought. And no matter how hard I try as a beginner, there will always be better peers who are smarter and work harder than me. In such an environment where the best peers are piling up, it sometimes makes one wonder deeply: is it true that the gap between people is sometimes even greater than the gap between people and dogs?

Compared to my shiny peers, I’m probably just plain ordinary. For many years afterwards, I was unconsciously influenced by the environment from which I came. In all fairness, I haven’t seen other places with peer pressure as heavy as it was back then since I graduated from high school. However, until now, whenever I accomplish a small achievement, I still subconsciously think “that’s far from good enough”.

Over time, I unconsciously developed a mindset: I should choose to do what I was already good at in order to be able to reach a higher standard and even perfect. Otherwise, I would be exposing my shortcomings and struggling to reach the heights that other peers who are already good at this field can reach. And although there are times when I’ll be interested in something, the thought of having to start clumsily from scratch and having trouble catching up with the progress of those who are already good at it makes me subconsciously retreat.

Obviously it is not a positive mindset. Perhaps it is also a consequence of being limited by the Matthew effect. It took a long time for me to realise this. Those who can make me feel such strong peer pressure are actually very rare in the overall environmental sample. Because of these unaware pressures, I gave up some opportunities to get out of my comfort zone by “learning from scratch”, which hindered my later growth. Because I was too much of a perfectionist & too afraid that I won’t meet the standards I want when I encounter something I’m not good at. In a sense, it’s kind of a stubborn thing to do.

After I realise my source of anxiety and insecurities, I started to force myself to accept the imperfection in daily. For example, allowing myself to update posts on the website with just random thoughts. Perhaps because of my former experience in the debate team or MUN, I used to think I should not express any idea in public without proper verification or research, otherwise, it is not professional. I used to think everything should be organised structured before posting, otherwise, it is not guaranteed good enough. I used to want to reach a high standard in every beginning, it turned out either couldn’t last, or couldn’t start.

We have to admit, people always have to make compromises to keep things working sustainably. However, we easily ignore the important or even existence of sustainable development of ourselves. Anyway, I am glad that I didn’t trapped by the limitation of mindsets & finally made some progress on fixing it. Life is with such a long time span, and I am grateful to the fascinating diversity in this unpredictable world.

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The Matthew Effect

The Matthew Effect is social phenomenon often linked to the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In essence, this refers to a common concept that those who already have status are often placed in situations where they gain more, and those that do not have status typically struggle to achieve more. This phrase has been attributed to sociologist Robert K. Merton and based it off a biblical verse in the Gospel of Matthew.

‘For unto every one that have shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but him that have not shall be taken, even that which he have.’ Matthew 25:29

Sometimes the Matthew Effect is also referred to as accumulated advantage, where those who have more have an advantage to acquire more.