Monday, October 23, 2006

Perfectionism

When is your effort good enough?

As the second real blog I post, I realize that it's a bit of a somber question, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. I've always been a very busy person, successfully juggling multiple activities and academics. For the most part, I really enjoy having a lot of different things going on (blame it on my undiagnosed ADD :) ). But it seems lately that I approach tasks differently than a lot of people. I have this strong internal drive to be able to do many things very well, and don't like to be seen in any way as not good enough.

When it comes to class assignments and studying for tests, I won't stop working until I've done everything I think I should do, or I literally run out of time. With non-academic pursuits, I agree to do almost everything if I can literally fit it into my schedule (think tetris). And I tend to feel guilty about what I pass up, especially when it comes to acting against injustice. Put together, this usually means doing things for school or others at the expense of things that affect solely me (i.e. cleaning my room, getting a haircut, sleeping). It means missing out on things that I would otherwise enjoy because I don't have the time to perfect them (e.g. playing all sports other than soccer). Most importantly, it usually means I'm bound to not meet all my expectations and end up disappointing myself, let alone everyone else I've committed to doing things for.

A few years back an undergrad at Duke wrote an editorial entitle "Effortless Perfection." If you haven't seen it or want a refresh, click here. While an extreme scenario, the underlying messages are scarily familiar. At what point do you start allowing yourself to mess up, to not take on everything you can, and to not set the bar quite so high? Even if you ignore societal pressure, what about your own expectations?

Is this a gender specific stress? Which is a greater factor, society's expectations or your own? And where do you draw the line between pushing yourself to make the most of your life, and trying to be too perfect?

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Women and strength

So the other day a friend of mine posted a blog mentioning something about women taking some responsibility for rape, especially when they don't take any precautions to protect themselves. After giving him a long lecture about why womeon should never be blamed for being raped, regardless of what they were wearing or how flirtatious they were being, I realized that he did indeed have a point. He just wasn't doing a very good job of stating it.

In today's world, women face a lot more dangers physically than men do. We're a lot more likely to get mugged, raped, robbed and abused than our male counterparts. Yet, very few women take it upon themselves to protect themselves. I can't begin to say how many women I've seen go to the gym for the sole goal of losing weight, without any regard for building up some strength. How many women ever seriously undertake a martial arts class, learn to shoot a gun, or pursue some other non-dainty self defense mechanism? As nice as the whole chivalry thing can be, I for one get rather tired of seeking out a male escort to walk me to my car late at night, or avoiding running by myself at certain times and in certain areas. Are taking those extra precautions worth it? And if so, are those who don't take those (or any) precautions at all responsible for anything happening to them?

I guess what I'm getting at is this: when will women start to take responsibility for protecting ourselves instead of waiting around for a man to do so? And to what extent (if any) should we have to?

A new start

Since I've been reading a lot of other people's blogs lately, I decided to start one of my own. I mean, common, you know I have a ton of thoughts running around my head at any one time, so might as well post some of them. I intend for this to be an interactive site, so please respond to whatever you like!