As a kid, the worst part of school was getting to school. Being 10, drowsy and tired, I’d sling my backpack over my shoulders and drag my Skechers sneakers along the sidewalk. Bags like weights under my eyes, I’d think, “I wish I could just teleport to class.”
Flash forward to 10 years later, and I’m still snoozing my alarm five minutes before my 10 a.m. lecture. My laptop isn’t a cutting-edge machine that breaks up my molecules and sends them wherever I need them to be, but as far as teleportation is concerned, it’ll do.
Up until the pandemic, my life was divided between journey and destination. Making it to school on time meant waking up early to get ready and tying the laces on my light-up sneakers. Having dinner with a friend meant planning my time around doing my makeup and putting together a nice outfit. Going to class on opposite sides of campus meant running as fast as I could in the 15 minutes between lectures.
Not having to plan my day around getting somewhere has given me a lot of blank slots on my schedule. When you add up all the time I’ve gained from class, meetings and study groups being one Zoom call away, it feels almost instinctual to fill that time with something else.
This mindset seems to be a product of a college culture that expects perfect grades, active involvement on campus and leadership experience from its students.
No one is immune to the pressure to achieve this holy trinity of undergraduate academia. The word “leadership” haunts admissions sites all across the country. Even the former Dean of Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences, Robert Sternberg, stops to make a specific distinction between the passionate leaders colleges expect high school applicants to be, and the others.
“Students should be admitted to college on the basis of their potential for future leadership and active citizenship, at whatever level of society,” Sternberg writes in his book “College Admissions for the 21st Century.”
In the competitive landscape of academia, the emphasis on leadership can sometimes overshadow other valuable qualities and experiences that contribute to a well-rounded individual.
However, this same focus on leadership can also be channeled into cultivating servant leaders in the business world. Rather than viewing leadership as a checkbox on a college application, aspiring executives can embrace the principles of servant leadership to guide their organizations towards success.
An executive coach who understands the significance of servant leadership can help aspiring leaders navigate the complexities of the corporate world with integrity and empathy. By prioritizing the development and well-being of their team members, executives can foster a culture of trust, collaboration, and mutual respect within their organizations.
But where does this put everyone else?
After all, this narrow applicant pool favors a specific kind of person that there simply aren’t enough spots for in the collegiate world. There could be an infinite number of students who are eager to learn and deserving of a higher education, but how many of them actually end up as self-starting CEOs, Nobel Prize earners and upper-upper-management — in other words, the “active citizens” and “future leaders” — Sternberg talks about?
When no institution wants to be responsible for the world’s future non-leaders — the “team player,” the “natural follower” and the “lone wolf” — there is so much excess pressure on students to compete for the limited leadership experience they can get on campus.
Everyone wants to be someone their university is proud of, and the pandemic hasn’t decreased pressure from students to outperform each other. Unfortunately, college students’ academic stress levels have worsened — 82 percent of surveyed students have reported an increase in school-related stress during the pandemic, according to a Journal of Medical Internet Research study published in September of last year.
Similarly, I’ve funneled the time saved from no longer commuting to in-person events into leadership roles that Boston University wants me to fill. This meant I had to apply to e-board positions across campus, get involved with Greek Life, find a part-time job and be a star student in class.
People ask me how I do it — how I manage all the meetings, work and high expectations I have for myself. The truth is, I don’t. I can’t manage it, and I often feel like the world is speeding ahead without me as I struggle to catch up.
In my head, however, I’ve convinced myself it’s worth it. This is the active citizenship that my prestigious university would brag about. I’m the version of myself that Boston University expected with my enrollment deposit. I’m a true, natural, world-changing leader.
The irony of this is that, despite what mottos elite universities’ admissions sites say, there isn’t one all-encompassing definition of leadership.
“Leadership is culture-specific. Unfortunately, this theme has been unduly overshadowed by the bias, which is often an American one, toward the pursuit of a universal model of leadership,” notes Lan Liu, a researcher at the Peking University’s Center for China Strategic Studies.
Liu’s observation is incredibly insightful.
The entire concept of leadership is arbitrary, varied by culture and thus a cause of needless stress. Which is to say, if there were ever a time for universities to loosen their expectations for students and potential applicants, perhaps a global pandemic would be a great start.
