Growing up, I associated my worth with good grades, high performance, and what others thought of me. This has traveled with me into adulthood. Over the past few years, I have been learning to navigate and heal from it as a working professional going back to school.
I don’t have everything figured out, but I’ll share a bit about what I have learned so far.
Just as a heads up, this is going to include a lot about my beliefs in Jesus Christ as a Christian and how they have helped me. If you would prefer a different post to help you with self-care as a working student, you can check this one out here.
Rest in God’s Rest.
In the Bible, specifically Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, ““Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
This means that if you’re tired of grinding it out to meet expectations set by other people, to give them up to God.
I still struggle giving it up at times, but here are few ways I’ve been able to implement this, and find rest as a Christian student:
Just do the best I can do.
If I can only give 30% effort, that’s fine. I have faith that God will take care of the rest.
Stop obsessing over results and trying to get perfection.
This includes obsessing over grades I’ll get. As for work, it includes how much profit I can produce for the company.
In both of these aspects, I can’t control the outcome.
I can only answer my college assignment questions the best way I can. And I leave it with that.
If you struggle with your identity as a high-achiever, it may take a while to get used to changing your mindset like this. It will be easy to go back to old habits. However, once you only focus on your inputs, and just do the best you can, you will feel so much better about yourself and life.
Being okay with doing what I can do and not stressing over outcomes has helped me find rest in God. I believe that doing this has also helped me recover from burnout as a working student.
Feedback is so helpful, even if it hurts.
I used to be afraid of constructive criticism because it felt like a hit to my identity.
Like, I put my heart and soul into something and it’s not good enough.
Don’t get me wrong, I still am kind of scared of receiving negative feedback. But I realize how much faster I can improve and reach my goals because I have clear things to work on.
Compare this to trying to guess at what I need to do in order to improve. That is so much work, and it’s really draining because I’m basically throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Receiving negative feedback is most definitely humbling, but it gives me a focal point to work on, that I wouldn’t have figured out otherwise.
An example of this is with my most recent Government class assessment.
I was so sure that I would ace the essay questions, however, I did worse than I expected.
Even though I had a lower grade, I watched the feedback video from my professor. I learned a key part of improving my writing skills, by using more specific wording. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t gotten that grade that I did.
I like to think that the hurt from failure and feedback helps me to remember the correction better.
Every time you have a failure or receive negative feedback, think about one way that this correction will help you in the future. It will still hurt, but doing this will strengthen your future.
(Psst, and it’s okay to still feel like crying at first haha.)
Conclusion
This is a heavier post than usual because it involves identity and faith. Even so, I recommend giving these suggestions a try.
Feel free to check out this post next for more helpful tips I’ve learned as a working student.