Perfection Essay: Practice Makes Perfect, Right?

Practice makes perfect, right? This is a common phrase I heard growing up, and most of us have either heard or said this phrase at one point or another in our lives; maybe in regards to learning how to play a new instrument, or learning a new sport, even as simple of a thing as learning how to tie your shoes. But what is perfection? Perfection is to be without flaw, and as humans we all can agree that we all are flawed in one way or another. The affects of striving for perfection, while some say there are positive affects there is also a flip side to that which can lead to people struggling with depression and anxiety. In the twenty second century culture we are raised to strive for this unattainable perfection. The spectrum of pursing

As Benson states in the Many Faces of Perfection, “For some varieties of perfectionism, the link is clear. Socially prescribed perfectionism--believing that others will value you only if you are perfect--has been associated with depression and other problems, including suicide” (Benson 2003). The strive for perfect grades can come from either the approval from parents, from school admissions or from other students. While some students clearly don’t care about their grades, some students are pushing themselves too far to reach this goal. In the article The many faces of perfectionism, Benson cites, “Paul Hewitt, PhD, does not have much patience with researchers who argue that perfectionism--the need to be or appear perfect--can sometimes serve as a healthy motivation for reaching ambitious goals”(Benson 2003). Hewitt worked with many student patients and saw the affect this pressure for perfection only lead to depression. In the article Benson cites Hewitt, “To illustrate the difference, Hewitt tells a story about one of his patients, a depressed university student who was convinced he needed to get an A+ in a particular course,” Hewitt goes into depth about the patient, “The student studied hard and aced the class, but when Hewitt saw him afterward, he was even more depressed and suicidal than before. "He proceeded to tell me that the A+ was just a demonstration of how much of a failure he was," says Hewitt. If he were perfect, the student argued, he wouldn 't have had to work so hard”(Benson 2003). This is an example of how some collage students are pushing themselves and in the end do not find fulfillment in his pursuit for this perfection but are only left depressed. Julie Scelfo writes in Suicides on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection that, “America’s culture of hyperachievement among the affluent has been under scrutiny for at least the last decade, but recent suicide clusters…. have renewed the debate (Scelfo 2015).