"A Perfect Day" (1999) by Maurizio Cattelan
Describe a time in your life when you have behaved like a maximizer. What kind of things do you spend a lot of time trying to get perfect?
Friday, July 22, 2022
Ch. 7. Choice: Merely Excellent is Perfect
Describe a time in your life when you have behaved like a maximizer. What kind of things do you spend a lot of time trying to get perfect?
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In high school, my grades were incredibly important to me. Every day before class, I would get the worst stomach aches from anxiety over getting the perfect grade. This sort of mentality followed me into my first semester of college, and I would worry myself sick the night before a big test or before turning in a homework assignment. This past semester, I took a class that really challenged me, and it made me realize that a couple B's aren't going to plummet my overall grade in the class. It's healthy to strive for good grades, but I realized it was crossing the line when it started affecting my mental health.
ReplyDeleteEmily Crowley
I am the same way! I took a challenging college course concurrently last year. It forced me to actually study, which was completely foreign territory at the time. I also struggled to adjust to the professor’s style of teaching at first, which greatly affected my confidence. I was sick with anxiety about every assignment through the entire semester. I made it out with my GPA intact, but I know I will have to find ways to combat the anxiety moving into this year. My averages suffered in all my classes, and the impact on my mental health was not worth it.
Delete^Emma Olsen
DeleteWhen I am writing something as a personal project that does not have a deadline, I can get so caught up in the story being "perfect" that it never gets done. Some of this stems from me worrying that what I have written will not be liked by others, so that may also may be me purposefully avoiding finishing it. I am also this way with homework sometimes, where wanting to get a perfect score has completely affected my mood, and that need for perfection trumps my desire to learn.
ReplyDeleteOne thing in life that I have always wanted to be perfect is my running career. At times I have gotten frustrated when there are runners that do not work as hard as me but still beat me. I have also got frustrated at times when injuries have prevented me from racing. However, I would be much better off if I was content with the amount of athletic ability and talent that I have been given. Even when I get injured, I should remind myself that running isn’t and should never be my whole life.
ReplyDeleteIn the past couple of years, I have realized that I am a people pleaser, and this played into me behaving like a maximizer for the majority of my senior year. My grades always came first and I always pushed myself to do better. This is a good thing, but I never felt like I was doing enough. If I wasn’t studying then sometimes I would feel guilty. Also, with it being senior year I wanted to do everything, and take every opportunity because I knew it was my last. I am thankful I did because I made a lot of amazing memories, but at the end of most days I felt drained. I felt guilty when I said no to anything. It took me until the end of my second semester to realize that I needed to just soak up and enjoy moments instead of stressing all the time. I continued to work hard for my grades, but social interactions turned into fun moments and not obligations.
ReplyDeletePeople pleasing is one of my major problems especially with family and friends and it does it feels like it drains you. There have been times in my life where I put everybody else first then in the end, I felt left out and guilty.
DeleteAllie Brown
I have not stopped being a maximiser. Even from when I was in middle school, I never thought of anything other than to do the best or as perfect as I can be. It’s part of being pressured to do things that I don’t like and having to strive to become something extremely good by a lot of people and things. It makes me tired, and sometimes I just want to quit, but I don’t have the ability to. I have a big work ethic and will do anything I can to make others proud and to make anything as perfect as they can be. This is much bigger with my art skills than anything else. I want to make something amazing right off the bat and I get pretty upset if I don’t achieve that.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of it had to do with me in school. I always wanted to be the perfect student. In turn, I sometimes didn't have the fun I should have had or stuff like that. My head was in the wrong place. I think striving for perfection is good but you have to know how to control it. I try to be as perfect as I can on the football field, or in the classroom, or at my job. But I still make a lot of mistakes.
ReplyDeleteIn high school I was a maximizer about my grades and fitting in, I had to make sure I got that perfect score then when I did not achieve it, I would beat myself up about it and it became a major issue for me. I would stress myself out about it every day and it came to the point where I would make myself sick just on one question. I still do this, but I am trying to work on it and relax about it.
ReplyDeleteAllie Brown
Keeping this anonymous to not out myself, but I just recently got into Magic: The Gathering. It's a nerdy card game from the 90's that's evolved into an incredibly fun and complex game that allows you to flex your procedural mind-muscles and your ability to memorize dumb rules and card names. I found that simply building a deck online is incredibly fun, and in doing so I've spent the better parts of my days just thinking about how the game functions and how to perfect a certain aspect of the decks I build. I've spent days pruning decks into their most perfect form and I still feel like I need to find better options to make them even better. I don't even play with the decks I make and I constantly feel the need to improve upon them. I'm not even describing a time in my life, I'm describing the present me. Thank God that the game has a social aspect to the game that keeps me engaged with others. I've actually made quite a few friends playing at the game shop here in town.
ReplyDeleteI’m going to preface this by saying I am not a perfectionist, and I certainly don't consider myself a maximizer. I’m generally too apathetic to care about a lot of the minutiae that life has to throw at me. The only times I tend to use very much mental energy on a decision is if a large sum of money is involved. Thankfully I’ve never been responsible for buying my own car or anything that might have a non-trivial impact on my life, so the only times I have to spend a large quantity of money is when I’m buying a game console. Those purchases are the only times I somewhat lean into the maximizing category. Now that mostly applies if I’m buying a console that’s used (if I’m buying one new then I don’t have to worry as much because I wouldn’t be buying it second-hand). This process generally involves looking at various websites and sellers, with myself turning into the proverbial Goldilocks trying to find the one that’s “just right,” which can either take a few days or a few weeks depending on how much I care about that particular purchase.
ReplyDelete