If you’re reading this, be gentle and be patient with those around you because mental health problems are almost invisible and affect everyone.
To my Georgia Tech community,
My hope for IfYoureReadingThisGT is that it encourages our campus to be transparent and vulnerable with each other. I hope that my letter begins a collection of letters which encourage each person to know that they are not alone in their struggles.
If You’re Reading This… Be Gentle with Yourself and Others.
Growing up, I did not color outside the lines. If a line strayed from its path, I redrew it. If a letter looked too crooked, I rewrote it. If my made-bed wrinkled, I smoothed it. In highschool, each time I typed a paper, I wrote, read, and re-wrote each sentence until it sounded just right. Each time I painted, I drew every line before I took the first stroke. Now in college, I cut and glue each architectural model precisely. To say the least, any task takes me frustratingly long to complete. For a long time, nothing was ever good enough. As I grew up, my perfectionist mindset started to take a toll on my well-being.
After a difficult first year of college, I experienced the negative impact of my mindset as I took on a summer internship and two aggravatingly difficult classes: Calculus and Physics. Tech students are assumed and expected to excel in math and science, however for me as an architecture student I struggle in those subjects. Through not meeting my own expectations and those placed on me as a Tech student, I fell into a self-defeating mindset. No matter how hard I worked in my classes, my best never felt good enough. I worked for hours on my assignments only to achieve a feeling of failure and defeat. I constantly told myself I wasn’t good enough. I internalized every mistake and every shortcoming. My self-defeating mindset pushed me into a depression and made me want to isolate myself. My classes and workload were already hurting my relationships with my friends, but my want for isolation pushed them away even further. Despite pushing him away, my best friend intervened and showed me the love that I was not showing myself. He taught me how to be gentle with myself: to not get so worked up when things don't go as planned, to not criticize myself for every mistake I made, to acknowledge and appreciate both my strengths and weaknesses, and finally to know that my best may not be perfect.
At times the pressure to be “perfect” or achieve great success creates an environment which makes it difficult to see past my weaknesses, mistakes, shortcomings, or imperfections. In times of frustration or self defeat, I refer to a quote by Virgil Abloh:
“I embrace imperfection as much as I embrace the pursuit of perfection.”
It serves as a reminder for me to continually try my hardest and move forward when opportunities do not work out exactly how I intended.
The process of learning these lessons has not been quick nor do I think I have fully grasped them. But it is the time, intention, and patience from myself and others that allows me to break from my self defeating mindset.
So…If you’re reading this, be gentle with yourself: appreciate your strengths, do not dwell on shortcomings, and accept vulnerability.
If you’re reading this, be gentle and be patient with those around you because mental health problems are almost invisible and affect everyone.
Sarah T., Georgia Tech ‘22
