Totally depends. One of mine is and it’s on the line of healthy/not healthy. One downside I will share that she’s worked on a lot is tolerating others who can’t keep stride with her or who she sees as holding up the process. Even in grad school with a lot of other really smart kids, if there was someone in a group project that wasn’t holding their own, it could really wind her up. I remember when she was taking real analysis pre-grad school, the professor would put them in groups of varying ability to solve tough problems. She would grow impatient and had the tendency to want to go off on her own and knock it out. The professor picked up on this and admonished her from doing that because it was compromising learning opportunities for others.
She is in a consulting environment now, so this doens’t tend to happen all that often. But I worry about her in a normal corporate setting, where there are all kinds of people and playing nice in the sandbox is required. Don’t get me wrong. She’s a sweet kid and very empathetic as a general matter. But when she’s focused on something, especially something challenging, she’s like a race horse with blinders, and her borderline OCD wants to assert itself.
She has been like this since she was a very little girl.
I guess some perfectionists may just set high standards for themselves, while some others may also do so for those around them. The latter may be viewed by some as having leadership quality as long as they don’t make the lives of others around them miserable.
Athletes, especially in team sports, tend to be outgoing and have a strong work ethic, so it isn’t surprising that many of them found success in sales.
It depends. There is a difference between holding oneself to high standards vs holding oneself to unrealistic goals. There is a difference between learning from failures and striving to improve vs becoming obsessed with reaching goal and/or avoid activity after failure.
Being a perfectionist doesn’t necessarily mean there is a problem. However, being a perfectionist can be a symptom of a problems, such as when it contributes to unhealthy behaviors or negative mental health. There have been numerous reviews that found perfectionism can contribute to stress, anxiety, social phobia, depression, feelings of inadequacy, eating disorders, etc. Perfectionism can also contribute to things like avoiding activities where there is a significant risk of imperfection/failure.
I think “outgoing” includes self-confidence, but I thought I’d highlight that one. In some cases I’ve seen with athletes, it gave them confidence to do something that a lot of other similarly situated people would consider out of reach. I’m thinking of a D1 football player at a top program I once knew who would fit that description to a T. You could tell him, “you’re not smart enough for MIT,” and his natural and immediate response would be, “Yeah, I’d figure it out.” He just thought there was nothing he couldn’t do.
It’s interesting that you mentioned self-confidence. It’s another attribute that are generally viewed positively. However, like perfectionism, too much of it may have negative consequences in certain situations.
I would associate perfectionism with being prepared as thoroughly as possible so as to have the best chance of success, rather than trying to avoid risk.
Again it depends. Some perfectionists meet your description. Others often avoid activity after failure/imperfection. Many do both, in different situations. Continuing with the perfect 4.0 GPA example, a student might avoid taking a class in an area they enjoy, if they believe taking the class has a significant risk of A-/B+ grade. Taking it further, some students might switch majors or career path to avoid risk of A-/B+ grade. There are healthy and unhealthy types of perfectionism.
A quote from a paper in the American Journal of Psychotherapy that goes into more detail is below:
Even in activities which no one
could reasonably expect to master immediately—learning a new language,
sport, or job role—the errors and small failures that normally occur are
experienced as embarrassing, as if they should not happen, and every
attempt is made to avoid such occurrences.
This avoidance may constrict the activities of perfectionists and sharply
reduce the number of avenues open to them for potentially gratifying or
growth-enhancing pursuits. They miss out on romantic, educational,
athletic, or career opportunities because of their irrational fears and
unreasonable expectations. They channel their lives into a limited range of
activities in which there is little chance of failure, but also little opportunity
for unexpected joy or the discovery and development of latent talents.
Isn’t there substantial pressure of this nature on pre-med and pre-law students? Maybe not necessarily 4.0 GPA, but a very high college GPA is needed to get into medical school or a law school with good law job prospects.
Perhaps we define perfectionism a little differently. I know this is how this thread started, but I wouldn’t call a student not risking an A-, for example, a perfectionist. To me, a perfectionist is someone who finds any imperfection as reason for improvement. Even getting an A isn’t really “perfection”, and there’s room for improvement.
My daughter the athlete was exactly the opposite. She is shy, lacks confidence in many things. She worked very very hard at both her studies and athletics because she was afraid of someone discovering that her admission was a big mistake. She already knew that the coach thought she wasn’t as good as others on the team (she didn’t have as many awards from hs as some of them), but that wasn’t true and she was as good as the rest (better, says her mother not-so-humbly). She was a perfectionist, but wasn’t in competition with anyone else. She was very very stressed when she started college, but once she got a semester under her belt and didn’t flunk out, she was a lot less stressed about everything.
When she interviewed for jobs, the employers liked that she was a captain and leader and could see that there was more behind her shy presentation. Her grades were her grades and they could use them to compare her to others, but it was the other things on her resume they were interested in -leadership, team player, time management. I don’t believe any of the interviewers were college athletes.
Imposter syndrome is a difficult thing to carry. In many ways it’s worse, since the person believes that they’ve already failed, it just hasn’t yet been discovered.
People with imposter syndrome can often take crazy risks, since they often feel that what they have done and are doing isn’t good enough. Since they feel that they’ve already failed, they’re not risking anything. Others will, of course, just try to keep their heads down, and not draw attention to themself.
People with Imposter syndrome are sort of in competition with others, but not to beat others. They feel that they are need to keep up with others.
I’ve seen what happens when a person with imposter syndrome feels that they are “at the lead”. They can freak out - “all of these people are smarter and better than me, so if I’m out in front, there must be something really wrong going on”.
Luckily, imposter syndrome can be overcome - “fake it till you make it” does often work.
