I have always struggled with comparing myself to others. Success as an athlete revolves around doing better than someone else. In high school, the future of my education hinged on my athletic performance and whether or not I had better grades and results than the other fencers in my cohort. In college, the entire season revolves around NCAA championships, a single competition to measure how "good" a college athlete is.
The rational side of me knows that the comparison game is futile. But as much as I've tried to focus on my own progress, it's hard to ignore the person on the slightly higher podium next to me. I've found this especially difficult at Stanford, surrounded by so many amazing students in an environment that places so much value on achievement. While there's no better place to find inspiration, there's also no better place to fall prey to comparison and self-doubt.
This was my third season at Stanford, and just like the previous two, I started the year with my eyes set on NCAA championships. Through the 7 a.m. practices, the weekend traveling, the sleep deprivation, the missed social events, and the physical fatigue, staying focused on this ultimate goal helped me push through the grind, day by day.
Then, along came COVID-19. Five days after several of my teammates and I qualified for NCAAs, we received the news that they were canceled.
I felt numb at first. I knew that the decision was for the better, but it was also difficult to fully process the feeling that all of my hard work had been for naught.
As it turns out, I didn't have much time to dwell. I returned home right after NCAA regionals, and three days later, I found out that my dad, an ER doctor, had been exposed to the virus. He immediately moved out into a hotel to avoid exposing me and my mom. Two days after that, my mom, who's also a doctor, woke up with a 101-degree fever.
The worst-case scenario flashed before my eyes. My mom has preexisting health conditions that put her at a higher risk, and with both of my parents working in healthcare, the worst-case scenario could be pretty bad. Moreover, we have relatives with special needs who rely on my parents for support, and I didn't want to think about what would happen should this scenario play out.
Needless to say, NCAAs now seemed very, very small.
Thankfully, a few days later, my mom tested negative for the virus, and both she and my dad have been healthy since. Nevertheless, it was still a wake-up call. It became clear to me that NCAAs truly didn't matter all that much. And I know that seems like an obvious observation, but doing well at NCAAs was just one of the many trivial things that I had placed so much value on pre-pandemic. Looking back on the year, so much of my life was motivated by this desire for achievement: the hours I poured into training, the unhealthy lack of sleep, the painstaking tech recruiting process, the heavy courseload. But with the onset of the pandemic, these constructs of comparison that I had far too often used to measure my own worth came crashing down. First, NCAAs; then winter quarter finals; then spring quarter grades; and now possibly, my senior year. In the span of a few weeks, the comparison game was no longer a viable source of motivation: I had no one to fence, no competitions to look forward to, no insanely accomplished students around me, no social events to worry about. The pandemic has forced all of us to retreat into isolation, and in this isolation, I now only had one person to compare my progress to: myself.
This definitely came with an overwhelming sense of pointlessness at first. Without any external sources of motivation, I had to think deeply about why I do… well, anything at all. But slowly and surely, without anyone around me to compare myself to, I began to draw motivation from my internal passion rather than from my external competitors. When I started training at home – going on runs, working out in my backyard, doing video analyses, and hitting a makeshift target in my garage – it wasn't because I had a medal or a competition on my mind; it was just because I missed fencing. Without NCAAs to look forward to, I remembered that the whole reason I do the sport is because I love it, not because of one competition at the end of the season.
A similar pattern has emerged in the other aspects of my life. Without grades or finals to worry about, I've had a lot more time to explore different areas of computer science, reading papers and talking to grad students to learn more about their work. Instead of working myself to the bone trying to keep my grades up while maintaining a busy training schedule, I've had the time to read about a ton of cool research at Stanford and remember why I love CS in the first place – not because I want a shiny internship on my resume, not because I want to fit into tech culture at Stanford, but just because it's cool.
This mentality hasn't always been a productivity booster. I have weeks when I'm hit with no motivation, and all I want to do is lie in bed and binge Netflix. Without competitions to train for or grades to keep up, it's been a lot easier to cut myself some slack when I really need it. And I realized that that's OK – again, a seemingly simple concept, but one that I had struggled with on a campus buzzing with productivity. And I've been a lot healthier physically and mentally because of it.
I know that it's naive to think that I can just start living in a world devoid of comparison and achievement. Competition isn't all bad – it's fun, inspiring, and motivating. But it shouldn't be all-consuming, and it's a little crazy that it took a pandemic for me to realize that. Hopefully, when all of this is over, I can bring this perspective back to the non-pandemic world and live life a little bit healthier and happier, focused on no one else's progress but my own.
-- Madeline Liao