Filling the Page
by Craig Berger
If you're like me, you've found yourself in this position before: sitting at your computer with Microsoft Word on the screen and ready to go, staring at a blank document, typing 58 first sentences and repeatedly hitting backspace, erasing each one. Coffee doesn't help. Music doesn't help. Nothing I write is good enough. I think I know what I want to say, but the words just don't fully capture the point. And whatever I do end up writing, I don't want to be misunderstood.
It sounds like writer's block, but it didn't take long for me to realize it was much more than that. I felt this sense of pressure to get it right a number of times as an undergraduate student and in grad school, leading me to develop a chronic case of procrastination born out of a fear of not being perfect. I feared committing to words because I didn't want people to attribute opinions, words, or thoughts to me that I didn't mean to communicate.
As I look back now, I realize that this frustration wasn't just restricted to those late-night binge writing sessions; those moments were just microcosms for how I was experiencing life. What if I tried things and failed? What if I raised my hand to answer a question in class and I completely whiffed on the answer, in public? What if I ran for a student government position and lost? What if I cared about an issue, began working on it, and either ran out of time or ran into a wall? And worst of all, what if I acknowledged this fear and learned that no one else felt like I did?
I remember looking around and wondering of my peers, "how is it so easy for them to put things down on paper?" "How do they speak in class so confidently, with no apparent care in the world?" "How do they get break after break?" These thoughts became increasingly paralyzing, as they led me to constantly conduct cost/benefit analyses with everything I experienced. The result was years of relying on luck, half-measures, and nights of no sleep. After all, if I didn't invest 100 percent, if I didn't give myself enough time to put all of my energy into assignments, I had that crutch on which I could rely: I didn't get the best grade/result, but I know that if I had actually, fully tried, I would have.
Not until grad school did I realize how much I was depriving myself of life by thinking that way. To their credit, my parents always told me that I am who I am and that all I needed to do was to try my best. But society tells us we need to be perfect, and this pressure to do well, to be fully understood, and to be well-liked by my peers made it tough to abide by my parents' ostensibly relaxed standard.
If I could go back in time 10 years and give myself advice, I'd say this: just write. You don't have to be perfect. It's OK to not be fully bought into the words you use, or actions you take, or even to an identity you own. Regardless of how well they may hide it, everyone else is fighting a hard battle in one way or another, and the more you obsess about your deficiencies in relation to their strengths, the fewer gifts you observe in yourself. If you're misunderstood when trying to say something or do something you actually believe, is anyone going to remember that moment in time in, say, 75 years? Probably not. They're more likely to remember that you were the best you that you could be, and in being that person, you made others feel like they could be the same.
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from UMBC Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
If you're like me, you've found yourself in this position before: sitting at your computer with Microsoft Word on the screen and ready to go, staring at a blank document, typing 58 first sentences and repeatedly hitting backspace, erasing each one. Coffee doesn't help. Music doesn't help. Nothing I write is good enough. I think I know what I want to say, but the words just don't fully capture the point. And whatever I do end up writing, I don't want to be misunderstood.
It sounds like writer's block, but it didn't take long for me to realize it was much more than that. I felt this sense of pressure to get it right a number of times as an undergraduate student and in grad school, leading me to develop a chronic case of procrastination born out of a fear of not being perfect. I feared committing to words because I didn't want people to attribute opinions, words, or thoughts to me that I didn't mean to communicate.
As I look back now, I realize that this frustration wasn't just restricted to those late-night binge writing sessions; those moments were just microcosms for how I was experiencing life. What if I tried things and failed? What if I raised my hand to answer a question in class and I completely whiffed on the answer, in public? What if I ran for a student government position and lost? What if I cared about an issue, began working on it, and either ran out of time or ran into a wall? And worst of all, what if I acknowledged this fear and learned that no one else felt like I did?
I remember looking around and wondering of my peers, "how is it so easy for them to put things down on paper?" "How do they speak in class so confidently, with no apparent care in the world?" "How do they get break after break?" These thoughts became increasingly paralyzing, as they led me to constantly conduct cost/benefit analyses with everything I experienced. The result was years of relying on luck, half-measures, and nights of no sleep. After all, if I didn't invest 100 percent, if I didn't give myself enough time to put all of my energy into assignments, I had that crutch on which I could rely: I didn't get the best grade/result, but I know that if I had actually, fully tried, I would have.
Not until grad school did I realize how much I was depriving myself of life by thinking that way. To their credit, my parents always told me that I am who I am and that all I needed to do was to try my best. But society tells us we need to be perfect, and this pressure to do well, to be fully understood, and to be well-liked by my peers made it tough to abide by my parents' ostensibly relaxed standard.
If I could go back in time 10 years and give myself advice, I'd say this: just write. You don't have to be perfect. It's OK to not be fully bought into the words you use, or actions you take, or even to an identity you own. Regardless of how well they may hide it, everyone else is fighting a hard battle in one way or another, and the more you obsess about your deficiencies in relation to their strengths, the fewer gifts you observe in yourself. If you're misunderstood when trying to say something or do something you actually believe, is anyone going to remember that moment in time in, say, 75 years? Probably not. They're more likely to remember that you were the best you that you could be, and in being that person, you made others feel like they could be the same.
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from UMBC Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
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Posted: September 14, 2014, 5:41 PM