By Jillian Snyder

You over-commit because you like to be deeply involved in things, but the ability to go deeply into anything is compromised because of how spread thin you are. . .

. . . It’s 7:30 am and I am rolling over in bed feeling the blue morning light nudge me through the parted blinds. My roommate has been gone for the last hour or so, skipping class to drive into the city to be an extra in a Hilary Duff movie. In my dreams, I was back home in the east peacefully falling asleep in the back seat of a friend's car, but now that my roommate’s cell phone has already rung twice and received a text message, there is not much else to do but get out of bed.  

Today, I have paper due in my American literature class, a 10-part job application, a newspaper article due tonight, three classes and, of course, this.  Ironically, I'm actually skipping two of my classes to write this article. By now, I should know not to do this anymore. After all, this is my fourth year of university.  I should be able to balance my school, extra-curriculars, church and social life in a happy medium, but that is simply not the case. Instead, clutching my hot tea this chilly morning, I’m looking outside and wondering why this entire process of living is so miserable when I’m supposedly doing what I love.

— I am not alone in this struggle —

As a 23 year old, my generation is  a society of over-committers. We over-achieve. We outdo. We burn out. It is no surprise that last year Ivy League universities in the U.S. received their highest application pool in history. I was not shocked to see, at a recent performance at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, both a violinist and a composer who were only 19 years old. It is not even unusual that one of the authors I am covering in my Honours thesis surpasses me in age by only five years.

More than ever, young people are pushing themselves to succeed at almost any cost. Why is this? What is the drive behind our commitment to over-commitment? And can we change before families, jobs and just plain living turn us into a group no longer able to function?

This generation, known as ‘Millennials,’ consists of people born after 1982. Veronica Collins, a communications specialist for Trinity Western University, has done studies on the current generation of students coming into universities. Her research shows this age group has been more scheduled in their high school than any before them.

Balance not rewarded

Most of this time goes into structured activities such as volunteering, jobs, homework, clubs and family responsibilities.

Holly Nelson, associate professor of English at Trinity Western University and chair of the first-year English program, has noticed over a decade of teaching  the increasing pressure on students by universities. “Even though there is rhetoric that says we should be balanced, balance is not rewarded. If you want to do well you have to go through a kind of ‘suffering’ where you give up a kind of private life,” she said.

Nelson attributes this increasing pressure to both the access of university education and technological advances available to the masses. She calls this a “trickle-down affect” and notes how “even undergraduates are encouraged to go to conferences. People want you to have published articles by the time that you’re in your Masters. It used to be you didn’t have to publish articles until you were an assistant professor.”

Continue article >>

Where does this time go?

Collins states that the main reason for many of these students’ high work load is an increasing expectation of students from universities. “The pressure to have that resumé by the time you're 17 or 18 [years old] is huge,” she said.

Nelson also says that this kind of pressure focuses on students who are already high achievers.

She notes that the pressure is not the amount of work, but what students “could accomplish at a certain level,” and says that “particularly bright students are pushed much more than they were before.”

High pressure living

This sort of high pressure living is characteristic of Veronica Collins, a university communications specialist who has studied Millennials. An honours English student with several extracurricular activities under her belt, including editor-in-chief of the university’s newspaper, Collins found herself taking on 50 hours of work per week in addition to her full-time course load. Her commitment to both the paper and her work left her, among other things, feeling like she was only “skimming the surface” of her university experience. She explains, “you over-commit because you like to be deeply involved in things, but the ability to go deeply into anything . . . is compromised because of how spread thin you are,” adding that “it was taking care of myself that was the first to go.”

Inability to focus

The inability to focus and to take care of oneself is one of the chief dangers facing high-achieving Millennials today. With students sometimes arriving at university already burnt-out, it’s difficult to know where to draw the line between pushing forward and taking a rest.

In their book, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, sociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss examine the lives of this generation. What they see is a marked decrease in free time – a 37 percent decline in “unstructured” free time. However, it is this free time that so many of these highly structured, over-achieving young people need to figure out their lives. Collins notes that structure is one of the last things Millennials need more of. Instead, they need time for rest, particularly in university. In reality, university should ideally provide “four years of space in these really busy peoples’ lives to consider something outside the game plan and something outside of these peoples’ five or 10-year plans that they already have in their teens.”

Optimism

Overall, however the future does look bright for we over- committed. Howe and Strauss note that the Millennials’ hope to bring about change in the big issues, such as the environment and poverty, might happen, due to their grounding in a solid work ethic and team orientation. However, this does not mean that it’s time to go join another club. It is instead time to be encouraged, that this work we do will pay off in the end, and in order to celebrate, maybe the best idea is to go take a nap!

Options Winter 2008