At a school like Georgetown, it can feel like everyone is an overachiever. Everyone is accomplished at something or the master of a talent. Most times I think it’s a blessing to be surrounded by such brilliant and skilled people, but in this environment, there can be a subtle pressure to perform well in all aspects of your life.
While the desire to excel is not necessarily bad, it can become toxic when this expectation seeps into what you do for leisure. For instance, if you are doing a common activity on campus — let’s say something like soccer — chances are you will be surrounded by former soccer captains or club players who are as good, if not better than you are.
When trying new activities, it’s also scary to be bad at something new! As we get older, we are less and less inclined to outwardly display that we’re fighting a learning curve, especially in an environment where there are people who are likely to do better than you at whatever new feat you’re trying to tackle.
Even beyond these expectations of success, I also understand the temptation to resort to only doing things you’re good at. It’s easiest to rely on the skills you have: they don’t require excessive brainpower and you’re way less likely to embarrass yourself trying to learn something new. You know that with relatively minimal effort, you will do decently well.
But what I’ve found is that sometimes not trying anything new or only doing things that you’re skilled in is less gratifying because there is no inclination to improve. That, or these activities, may not actually be all that enjoyable on their own.
Two examples come to my mind.
For one, I think about my mother. She used to be very good at track in high school.
She also absolutely hated it.
In her senior year of high school, she actually tried not to run for her school’s team, but her friends physically carried her to her school’s field on the first day of practice when they found out she wasn’t planning to join them. Even though she was very good at the sport, she found it so painful and nerve-wracking that it was not enjoyable to tough it out.
Second, to be super duper incredibly humble, I am very good at the game Just Dance.
I developed this “talent” (to exaggerate) during my first year of high school because I found it to be incredibly fun, even when I just played it by myself. However, I will no longer play it unless my friends want to because I find it boring most of the time when I’m alone (because, genuinely, I will likely get five stars every time).
(I’ll stop bragging about my super important and impressive Just Dance skills now, sorry for that…)
But in contrast to what I’m comfortable with, I think I have learned most from doing the activities I am incredibly mediocre at and not the things that I am good at or have spent my entire life doing. This includes:
No. 1: Guitar
I am so incredibly average at guitar. Dare I even say mildly bad? After taking ukulele lessons for a few years in middle school, I can definitely hold my own with that instrument. However, in my junior year of high school I decided that I wanted to teach myself how to play the guitar because I thought it was much more socially acceptable (I had been scarred by the post-2014 perception of ukuleles and the inclination for everyone to play “Riptide” by Vance Joy at any moment possible).
I am now what Ultimate Guitar used to call a “5-chord hero,” meaning I can play any basic song and can wrestle my way through other chords using a capo that transposes the song. With my ukulele training, I can also generally figure out how to do other simple chords that I don’t know off the bat, but I am definitely not good enough to play guitar for people other than my closest friends.
However, I love to play when I can! If I am obsessed with a song, I will try to learn the most simple version on guitar and play along with the song from my Spotify desktop tab. For fun, I now will also try to play really dumb songs on guitar (Like “Girl, So Confusing” feat. Lorde by Charli XCX) and will also play “Wonderwall” for random guests at my house as if I were a frat guy trying to show off at a party.
No. 2 Singing
So, I also can’t sing, but that doesn’t stop me! When I am home with my best friend (who also can’t sing), we BELT in the car. “One Last Time” by Ariana Grande is literally no match for me and my compact SUV. I also have a friend at Georgetown who loves to try to harmonize to songs and I love to giggle along as I attempt to harmonize with her (and fail). We even sing on the way to Mock Trial tournaments to the amusement and dismay of the other passengers in the car.
No. 3 Cooking
To be fair, I am not terrible at cooking — though I am by no means a “Master Chef.”
However, I have found that cooking is an incredible form of bonding with people. Whether cooking a meal with someone or for a group of people, I feel like cheffing up a dish is a top-tier form of showing someone that you care about them and sharing something you love.
For example, on Labor Day this year, I hosted a barbeque for a ragtag group of people I knew around Washington, D.C., and it was genuinely one of my favorite things I have ever done at Georgetown. Honestly, I was really terrified about how my grilling would turn out because the burgers I had made for some of my friends from home over winter break turned out very bad. Nevertheless, I pulled through with some pretty decent burgers and facilitated fun conversations with people who would have otherwise not interacted with each other.
I also cooked four steaks simultaneously for a Sunday Night Roommate Dinner the other night. Did my sear turn out as great as I wanted it to? No, I got more of a medium than a medium rare. But, I got to have a nice dinner with jazz and satiate one of my roommate’s cravings for steak, so a win is a win!
No. 4 Various Sports
There have been so many sports in my life that I have tried that I was not really the best at but still loved to do. From third grade through fifth grade, it was fencing. In middle school, it was basketball. In my first year of college, it was beach volleyball. Now, I have been saying that I want to join a boxing gym (when I have time…) because I did a free class last summer and found it to be one of the best workouts of my life. When it comes to sports, even though I may not be particularly good at whatever I am attempting to do, I just like to have fun.
Sports have also been how I have made most of my closest friends in life. When it came to basketball in middle school, I had absolutely no experience, yet I joined the team with all of my soccer player friends who were similarly inexperienced. Genuinely, it was one of my most fun and ridiculous endeavors, as we all had to fumble our way through. I loved it because it allowed me to try something new and compete with my team, but it also allowed me to develop deeper bonds with my friends, which I continue to foster today.
In college, my time on the rugby team has served a similar purpose. At the ripe old age of 19, I actually found the notion of trying a new sport to be incredibly daunting because I had not thrown myself into unfamiliar athletic territory since I was 12 years old. However, joining the team was probably the best decision I made in college. For one, I get to pursue a version of an activity I grew up with — running with a ball. Additionally, some of my closest friendships have grown from the people I have met on that team, even though I am definitely not the most skilled member of the team.
I am so very thankful that the fear of making a fool of myself and being mediocre at a new sport hasn’t stopped me from these activities so far because without a personal expectation to do well, I can focus on having fun and spending time with people whose company I deeply treasure.
OVERALL,
Only doing things you’re good at is incredibly limiting. By not trying new things or not pursuing things that you may not be naturally inclined to do, you miss a whole world of experiences and people that will enrich your life. Doing things you’re mediocre at truly teaches you what you love, how you love and who you love.
So, a word of unpolished advice from me: swallow your pride, laugh at yourself and love what you do.