We’re All in This Together

As midterms loom on the horizon, MSU’s problem with academic competition is beginning to rear its ugly head.

Throughout STEM fields, toxic competition is painfully obvious. Students compare test and quiz grades, coming away either dejected or smug depending on who’s on top. They battle it out over homework and projects. The world revolves around who landed the prestigious lab research job, who’s traveling to Europe for an internship, and who’s making it through honors calculus with a 4.0 GPA.

Within the humanities, which are far more dependent on attendance and participation, a different kind of contention pervades classrooms. Students revert to the tried-and-true trick of showing off. They constantly try to one-up each other with obscure facts and irrelevant analyses. Classes are stymied through students raising their hands to quote a long-dead poet or recite a useless statistic. Rather than including points that enhance the class, scholars will add information purely based on making themselves look superior to other students.

The ugliness of unhealthy competition manifests in a variety of ways. For some of us, it means constant stress as we attempt to measure up to everyone else. Freshmen and honors students in particular struggle with the new experience of being a small fish in a big pond. Junior Sara Lundeen describes academic competition that simply results in abandonment. “In the film program, as a freshman you have to pass a gate to move on. In reality it takes effort to not pass through. But as a freshman, many people don’t apply because they assume they won’t make it.”

For others, it can leave us decimated by disappointment. For students across all majors, unhealthy rivalry can result in a lack of motivation and feelings of purposelessness. Freshman Quinn Krause recounts his experience with academic competition in chemistry by discussing the urge to be “higher than average of your peers.” He felt “discouraged” and wanted to “do anything that is not chemistry with a higher energy, which means I have less energy for chemistry.”

Far be it from me to argue that all academic competition is bad. There are obvious benefits to a little healthy scholastic rivalry. It can motivate students, push them to learn interpersonal skills, and develop further engagement in course material. On occasion, competition even fosters unity among students. The danger of rivalries comes when we allow it to smother us like a pillow to the face.

Unfortunately, unhealthy competition fosters nothing but a tired high school mindset. Rather than learning how to build each other up, we’re stuck in a “Mean Girls”-esque cycle of depending upon the failures of others to define our own successes. Do any of us really want to be MSU’s Regina George?

Academic competition can effectively choke a student’s education. Rather than pushing someone to greatness, it can bring them to the edge of collapse. As a community, we need to learn how to balance competition to a healthy level.

One of the best ways to do this is simply to connect with other students in your major. Start a study group, host some hang-out sessions, or just talk with them. When we stop seeing each other as rivals and start looking at one another as part of a community, the ugly side of contention bleeds away.

It’s not just about the students, though. MSU professors and faculty have to keep one eye on fostering community within their courses. As much as I personally hate group projects, they’re certainly effective in forcing students to work with one another. I’m a naturally competitive person, and the MSU environment enhanced this streak of mine. I formed a rivalry with another student in one of my classes, but a group project helped ease the tension between us.

In the iconic words of “High School Musical,” we’re all in this together. Let’s ditch the rivalry and craft some serious reconciliation.