My entire life, I have been plagued with anxiety that I will not be enough, that I won’t work hard enough, that my grades won’t be good enough, that I won’t learn enough, that I won’t land the job, that I won’t get a Porsche, and so on.
I think some of that may be rooted in my upbringing. I often felt like I could never please my parents. I wasn’t going to be a pastor, I wasn’t going to go to Christian college, and frankly nothing in my life would have anything to do with Christianity. I also think that part of my inadequacy anxiety comes from the fact that I want so much from life. Whenever I don’t do my best on something, it makes me feel like that bright future that I want so much is slipping away.
This feeling of inadequacy was very strong during my freshman year of college. I wanted to be the most competitve student ever. I worked hard and wanted a 4.3 GPA. The year went on and I worked hard, but only achieved a 4.24. I knew that this was an incredible GPA, but for some reason I felt let down that I couldn’t achieve perfection. It literally made me feel like my future was once again on the line.
This year has been a different story. I wanted to change. The pursuit of perfection was too exhausting and disappointing. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I told myself that I needed to calm down a little bit and realize that perfection is not attainable for any of us. And you know what? It worked. I focused less on my grades, and more on just making sure that I was working hard, and it helped lower my stress levels. I’ve found that if I work my hardest, even if it isn’t perfection, I will still be doing very well.
This year is also the first time in my life that I have really begun to make strides towards my goals. For starters, I applied for internships at PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte, and actually got offers from my two favorite firms, EY and Deloitte. I remember thinking during freshman year that I could never work at Deloitte. I thought my grades and my resume would not be good enough. Fast forward a year, and executives at these companies have liked me enough to want me to be part of their teams. In addition to the internships, I made it into the exclusive Panthers in the District cohort. This is a cohort of 16 students who are selected from a pool of over 200 applicants to go through six months of professional development sessions. The process culminates in a four day trip to Washington D.C. in which we get to rub shoulders with executives at some of the best workplaces in the District.
This has been an incredible year of growth, and I’ve finally had to opportunity to see that my work is actually paying off. It’s been so fun to see myself becoming what I’ve wanted and securing the future I’ve always dreamt of. This just goes to show you, if you really work hard, your plans will come together.
Aidan's Audit 