"Box-checking" has a pretty negative connotation. It implies that your actions are inauthentic: the only reason you are doing something is to put it on your resume / achieve some glamorous end goal, not because you actually want to do it. It is often associated with helicopter parents and overachieving students trying to get into prestigious colleges. It is perceived as soulless running of the rat race. In this post, I attempt to flesh out a more nuanced perspective.
Over the years, I have observed that feeling the need to fill out one's resume and appear objectively impressive can be incredibly stressful and potentially damaging for individuals' mental health. In high school, many of my peers were stressed all the time about whether they were doing enough to be accepted into their dream colleges. I feel fortunate to have avoided this in my late teenage years because I planned to attend my home state university. I truly believe that I was doing the things I did in high school (focusing mostly on music and sports) because I enjoyed them, not because I felt forced to do them.
After starting college, however, the lines between authentic engagement and box-checking became more blurred for me. Did I join Engineers Without Borders purely because I wanted to help other people and learn about the world or because I wanted this cool international volunteering experience in my back pocket? Did I start doing my research internship because I really wanted to spend more hours of the day learning how to code in R or because I knew that it would open doors to future opportunities? Did I spend more time than I needed to setting up a socially-positive collaborative research project simply because I thought that it was important work to do or because I was already planning to apply for grad school in public health and knew that such a project would help strengthen my application? The honest answer to all of these questions is both. At times, I have felt uncomfortable with this duality: am I doing this because I care about it or because it will look good on my resume?
Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that this is a false duality. The overarching question to be asking is whether or not my actions are aligned with my values. If my career goals are aligned with my values, then doing things that help to advance my career (including working harder than I might otherwise enjoy) are often consistent, especially if I find the things I'm doing along the way to be meaningful in their own right. However, how can I determine the makeup of my intentions? How can I recognize whether I am motivated more by the prestige of an accomplishment or by the opportunities to help other people that will open up if I have that accomplishment? Does this balance of intentions (which is likely dynamic) even matter if the outcomes are positive for society? Thoughts in this vein are explored more in my post On Having an Impact.
Taking a step back: the truth is, to have any semblance of control over your life, I believe you have to be at least somewhat strategic. One of my favorite professors likes to say that being successful in college (and in life) amounts to making a large number of small-scale good decisions.
I add that while many small-scale decisions may be good on their own, one needs a sense of direction or purpose in order for the small decisions to amount to something good on the large scale. In other words, good decision-making requires context.
I think we would all agree that intentionality is a good thing. Identifying what you value, developing a vision of what you want your life to look like, and taking action to bring your vision about is necessary to avoid floating and letting circumstance and other people's choices dictate what happens to you. Streamlining your efforts towards your goals is often helpful. (See my post On Finding a Career Path.) But there is also a limit beyond which thinking about the future and attempting to optimize your actions in the name of your goals becomes unhealthy and unhelpful.
Late in my junior year of college, I unintentionally crossed this boundary. I have always been someone who is very aware of the future, but I think what finally tipped me over the edge was that I had spent much of the year up to that point applying for prestigious national scholarships: the Goldwater, the Astronaut, and the Truman scholarships. I had spent so much time writing and editing essays and my CV that I began to lose track of who I was beyond these measures of academic success. Applying for prestigious opportunities became so ingrained in my routine that I was halfway into a preliminary application for the Rhodes Scholarship (a fellowship in the UK) before I realized that I actually wanted to stay in the US for grad school. That summer, after learning that I had been named a Goldwater scholar, an Astronaut scholar, and a winner of the MCM (an international mathematical modeling competition), I felt more anxious and depressed than I ever had before in my life. I convinced myself that I was stressed about big problems in the world, such as climate change, economic inequity, and politics. This rationalization was partially true: I am deeply concerned about these issues and I plan to help work on addressing them for the rest of my life. However, in retrospect, the primary reason for my unhappiness was that I was simultaneously revved and burnt out. I had eyes only for the next sign post, the next box to check to keep optimizing my resume. And I was miserable.
Thankfully, my parents helped me to recognize my obsession and to work on maintaining a healthier mindset and stress level. I now know that managing my tendency to get caught up in the CV game (or any other life "competition") will be an ongoing personal challenge. And I know that I am not alone. In today's world, we are constantly presented with snapshots of other people's successes. I call this the social media effect. Whether it's on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, we are constantly shown what other people are most proud of and tend to fixate on the things others have that we do not. People in past generations have certainly experienced this as well, but the internet amplifies it to the extreme.
Going back to my story: despite the unpleasantness of my peak resume obsession, all the time that I had spent reflecting, figuring out what I wanted to work on in the future, and practicing articulating these ideas within the confines of strict word limits was a boon when it came time to apply for grad school. It certainly made my senior year of college a lot less stressful. However, looking back, I'm not sure whether I'd advise a younger me to follow in my footsteps.
So where does this jumble of thoughts leave us?
The questions of what to work on and how hard to work are difficult enough without simultaneously questioning our intentions. However, I have come to believe that pausing and asking ourselves the following every so often can help us to stay on more healthy, grounded paths:
- Am I feeling fulfilled by the work I am doing? Sometimes, fulfillment is synonymous with enjoyment. Other times, I might believe the work I'm doing is meaningful but not necessarily love completing the day-to-day tasks.
- Why am I doing this work? How do I feel about the balance of inwards (e.g. professional development) versus outwards (e.g. helping others) effort?
- Are the sacrifices I'm making to do this work consistent with my values? Sacrifices might be intellectual, monetary, or related to work-life balance.
Unfortunately, no one else can give us these answers. This conclusion may be unsatisfying, but it is up to each of us to decide what we care about and whether our actions (including how hard we're working and how long we have to wait for gratification) are in alignment with what we care about. Honestly answering these questions and willingly making changes in our behavior if and when we identify inconsistencies is a challenging and often cyclic endeavor, but ultimately is necessary if we wish to live authentic and meaningful lives.