On academia and depression

Therefore, life in academia is a constant, ever-fueled warfare.

The world of academia is a world of perfectionism; the standards are high, the bar is set at a level where students must reach or even surpass, and the implication of our performances speaks volumes about who we are. Academia prides its achievers with a high status, a most coveted reward; it is academia’s very definition of success. Those who get to the top get to the top because they deserve so, yet by implication, those who remain at the bottom remain at the bottom because they, as the logic applies, deserve so. Therefore, life in academia is a constant, ever-fueled warfare, let alone a struggle, where students prove what they have in order to be rewarded with a prized achievement. One’s identity is defined by what one can do and cannot do, or as it crushingly becomes apparent, by what one can do yet has failed in reaching an end to it, and what one can do but cannot do because of being incapacitated. This madness for perfectionism, where one must not inflict the slightest mistake, proves itself to be rather destructive for individuals who could not seem to fit themselves in the structure. One falls at the margins of academia and copes with what transpired with a wasted potential. Yet academia’s influence is too strong that being fit therein means one is on the right track in life; anything outside the academia, that is, what it did not put forward, is now the margins of society. And who gets depressed? The former academia-invested person who became a victim of their own perfectionist approach to things.