St. George campus is abuzz with academic stress as students look to do well during exam season, but book smarts are not the only measure of achievement. When do you feel successful?
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I feel successful when I am doing well in my studies. Fulfilling my academic potential reassures me that I am taking advantage of the education I am fortunate enough to be receiving, rather than wasting my tuition by performing poorly while others cannot afford it. Even though a degree is not a guarantee to a good career, success is measured in personal growth as well, and this translates in my ability to positively influence people around me and help my community.
I feel particularly successful when someone tells me the positive impact I have had on them. We are usually too caught up with wanting academic success to realize how the values and ideas we hold dear can affect people around us through something as simple as a conversation. Words can go a long way. The mere idea that I have been a source of inspiration and that I was capable of leaving a mark on a person feels very rewarding. What is truly beautiful about it is that our little actions contribute to a large-scale domino effect: the people we inspire will inspire others, who will inspire others, and it keeps going.
— Yasmine Kherfi, third-year student at University College specializing in political science
Success is a funny thing. Even when you’ve achieved it in one aspect of your life, you are often still chasing it in another. As a result, it is easy to feel as though you have never actually achieved success or been successful. While most of us can recall a list of personal achievements, when we’re asked if we are successful, most people say no. This is both good and bad: good because it means people are constantly pushing themselves towards new goals but bad because it means few take the time to truly appreciate what they have accomplished. For these reasons, it is difficult to consider success broadly
I feel successful when I achieve something small — things I didn’t know or plan to work towards. Sometimes, it’s as simple as recognizing a supporting character in a television show I like from an obscure movie I watched when I was 10, verifying on IMDb, and finding out I was right. Enjoy the small stuff and find your success story.
— Dryden Rainbow, fourth-year student at Trinity College studying political science and cinema studies
I feel successful for many reasons. It can be small, everyday accomplishments or something bigger that has taken time and effort to complete. Sometimes it is just a day of hard work that makes me feel successful. A personal aspect of success is in sports. Team success as well as my own individual success is important to me. When I am able to make a positive contribution, I feel as though I have done my job and am a part of the team’s success as a whole. Even when I am not able to help and the team is successful I feel successful, too.
In my first year at U of T, while playing on the varsity baseball team, we achieved our goal of winning the OUA championship, and although I was a freshman that did not play very much, I felt an enormous level of success in being a part of the team. In recent years, as playing time has increased, I have had more personal success and have contributed more toward team wins. These are a couple of the ways I feel successful.
— Daniel Connolly, third-year student at Victoria College studying economics
In economics, one of the first concepts you learn about is opportunity cost. By committing to one course of action, you subsequently miss out on other opportunities that are quantified as a “cost.” Keeping this in mind, I feel most successful when I reach goals that require sacrifice. Whether it’s acing a course, learning a new skateboarding trick, or landing a coveted internship position, reaching these goals often requires physical, mental, or social sacrifice. To me, it’s this sacrifice that makes goals that much more rewarding when achieved. Disregarding the opportunity cost is the only way you can truly follow your passions, live your life with no regrets, and reach your own version of success.
— Cindy Zhou
I would often read motivational books growing up, hoping that the wisdom they could impart would help me achieve success. A quote by William Ernest Henley — “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” — has stuck with me to this day. While this quote is intended as a positive affirmation, I have found at U of T that its achievement can be quite elusive. Far from a captain, at times, the attempt to succeed in all areas academic, social, professional, and extracurricular leaves me scrambling to even swab the deck of my ship. Attempting to achieve the “success” and “goals” I set out for myself, I often find myself trapped into making sacrifices in one area over another or scrambling to get even the bare minimum done. It is hard to feel in control over one’s fate when there is little time to ponder what that fate may be.
Therefore I find myself most “successful” at U of T when I am able to properly balance my commitments, achieve consistency in my actions, and still have time left over to reflect on what I’ve done.
— Christian Medeiros, third-year international relations specialist at Trinity College
Since the start of this semester, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be successful. In fourth year, it’s easy to fall into the trap of letting external standards for success dictate what success means to me: a good GRE score, high marks on term papers, acceptance to grad school… and, of course, these criteria for success are in many ways meaningful. Should I manage to be accepted into a graduate philosophy program, I would feel successful — even if such a standard for success was thrust upon me, rather than something I freely chose. However, as I write this comment, sitting in a cottage in northern Ontario, in front of a fire, with snow falling just outside the window, surrounded by friends, I can’t help but think that my success this year ought to be defined by standards markedly different from GRE scores and graduate school acceptances. At times like these, feeling successful seems to require nothing more than some good friends, a couple of beers, and enough wood to keep the fire going for another few hours.
— Thomas Slabon, fourth-year philosophy specialist at Trinity College
I find that the idea of success in our society is too strictly correlated to your accomplishments at school or in your profession. This seems to lead to pressure for everyone to be more successful than the next person. Instead, success should focus on a positive outcome for everyone. What little successes can you have in your day-to-day encounters that better you and someone else? How can you share success? I think this is the kind of shift in perspective that we need to take to approach the question of our own success.
Personal success should be linked to the bettering of society. If one person’s major success results directly in the misfortune of others, then can we really consider it a success in the broader sense? Of course, success is something people define for themselves, but I believe in the importance of widening our definition and scope of the word success to make it more collective. I feel successful when I have a conversation with someone and we each learn something from the other.
— Anja Dimitrijevic, first-year student at Humber College studying acting for film and television
I feel successful when I run a four-minute mile. No matter what else is going on in my life — bad grades, getting caught in the middle of family fights, generally dealing with the stress of first year — running makes me happy. I ran my first mile under four minutes on Saturday, and it felt absolutely amazing. Endorphins pumping, heart pounding, it was easy to forget about everything else for a minute and revel in how fantastic my body was feeling. I spend so much time worrying about grades, making new friends, and staying in touch with old friends that it’s easy to just generally feel stressed all the time. Running in general — and meeting my running goals in particular (of which a four-minute mile has been for a long time) — makes me feel really successful.
— Emily Boyd, first-year student at New College
Being in my fourth year of university, I think quite a bit about my future. Success is reaching a goal. It’s a form of fulfillment to push us to better ourselves. I’ve found that purpose is key to finding this fulfillment, and without any clear career path in mind I am forced to look for purpose in other places entirely. The small things suddenly become so much more important. I feel successful when I prepare an elaborate meal for a group of small friends without burning it. Enriching the lives of the people around you is rewarding and justifies itself. I feel successful when I’ve managed to wake up at a reasonable time each day of the week. Taking the time to read a chapter a day out of a book I actually enjoy and getting regular exercise are habits that provide daily goals to achieve. It is these small things that give me a sense of success every day.
— Alex Boer, fourth-year Canadian studies specialist at New College
When I get a midterm back and U of T deems me above average, I feel relieved. When I throw a successful fundraiser for a club on campus — even when we set minimal goals and surpass them — I feel elated to a point where I can and, embarrassingly enough, have cried. I’ve never cried from getting an A paper back. There is undoubtedly a greater sense of reward and fulfillment when a group effort, rather than an individual effort, achieves success. I can’t pinpoint what it is exactly that makes group success so much more fulfilling, but what I do know is that success is most enjoyable when shared.
Team success is largely undervalued in our society as a result of our individualist culture. And I can’t help but believe that individuals that regard individual success at the expense of other peoples’ success simply haven’t had the exposure to team success and the great sense of accomplishment that it brings.
Perhaps if U of T provided more opportunities for students to engage in team settings, students could see for themselves how much more rewarding team success feels in comparison to individual success. Perhaps then there would be a more supportive campus culture that could alleviate U of T’s notorious competitive atmosphere.
— Tiffany Ng, third-year student at Victoria College studying international relations and economics
It took a delayed flight, two hours north on Highway 1, and a few thousand miles away from home for me to realize how it felt to be successful. A step the wrong way or the snapping of a critical tree branch would have forced me to modify the criteria for success to be completing a deadly fall onto the rocky shore of Eagle River, but in the end I was successful in accomplishing my original goal. I sat perched on a cliffside, staring at the waterfall across from me, and congratulating myself on the decision to go hiking in Interior Alaska. Success that day was not the accomplishment of any goal I had set myself or a goal anyone had set for me. It was discovering a place in my country and in my mind where, despite the scoffs of friends and family as I bought those plane tickets, nothing else mattered. I was happy, I was calm, and everything happening to everyone of seven billion people on the same Earth where I sat had no bearing on that fact that I had succeeded. Three thousand miles from the town where I grew up, I was home.
— Matt Craddock, third-year computer science specialist at Trinity College
Because the word “success” is so relative, individuals have different ways of understanding what it means to them. Being a student at U of T, so much of the discourse around success is centered on academic achievements. Though I feel a certain sense of accomplishment when I receive a good grade on a paper, I don’t feel personally successful because, more often than not, I don’t have a personal attachment to the essay. The way I see it, equating success solely to how you perform in school or in your profession creates enormous pressure. For me success comes in the little victories. Success is learning a new word. Success is putting a smile on your friend’s face when they’re having a bad day. Success is looking through flyers and then saving money on your grocery bill. When I reward myself for these kinds of day-to-day successes, I’m left in a better mental state to pursue academic success.
— Roslyn Grant, third-year student at New College studying equity studies, Spanish, and religion
Success is not a mental state like pleasure. Nor is it like happiness if you think that happiness is just an emotion. Success is an objective accomplishment. I’m Aristotelian on this point. Success (deep happiness) is the result of life lived in accordance with virtue. Virtue is not a stuffy Puritan concept. It is meant to express the habits and ways of life that enable us to perform our functions well. As we are humans, our functions are multiple. I believe our highest functions are those concerned with inquiry and contemplation of the truth, followed by the fulfilment of our moral duties. Our success will consist in the well performance of the actions by means of which we accomplish these higher order functions. The virtues that enable us to do this are multiple, both moral and intellectual. The former are habits forged through strength of will, while the latter are the result of an education undertaken with a mind to truth rather than ambition or greed.
— Michael Luoma, fourth-year philosophy specialist at Trinity College
Every two weeks, The Varsity and Ask Big Questions U of T post a thought provoking question over social media to prompt students to start conversations about the things that matter most.
