What is it about being a University of Chicago student that gives you an inflated sense of self while still feeling like you are being crushed into the ground and that you are totally worthless?
I have a friend who is incredibly involved with campus activities, gets amazing grades, could go to any grad school that she wanted, and yet...has no close friends, feels like she is doing much worse than she actually is, and generally has no self-esteem. I find that this is very common among the undergraduate population, but accompanying those things is this incredible confident ('though this could easily be faked) public face. I have that. And while you are talking in that public persona, you are that confident person, but immediately upon stopping, you are filled with a sense of doubt and inadequacy. I don't get the impression that this double life is as prominent in other top-rated universities as it is here. So, back to my original question: How does U of C make you simultaneously self-assured and full of doubt?
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3 comments:
Interesting question. I think I recognize the paradox you describe, but I'm not sure what the cause may be.
this is a question that should be discoussed by the college population at large. have your friends spoken to you about it? Do you think it possible the students are overly concerned with how other prestigious schools look at one in the Midwast?
Being an alumnus of UC's undergraduate program myself, I believe that it may be because the university gives one a firm and realistic sense of all that one might accomplish but at the same time the realization that all accomplishments are fraught with a human element, which is to say that, even with an excellent accomplishment, the promise of error and incompleteness is great.
I could drive a truck through the holes in my BA paper.
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