Imagine you are sitting in class anxiously waiting for your test scores, hoping you did well on your most recent exam. You flip it over and see an 85. You are relieved and are about to celebrate the grade when someone else complains about their 90. Immediately, all of the hard work that deserves to be celebrated can’t be and the academic motivation is gone as you no longer feel good about the grade. 

This is just one example of how comparing yourself to others is harmful to yourself. While competition can motivate you to do your best, it can be unhealthy and cause more harm than good. 

There will always be the issue of students’ achievements and people wanting to share them. Of course, when you do something good you’re proud of yourself, and most people want others to know of their accomplishments but this issue actually hurts you more than it helps. In the end, the students will end up just comparing themselves with their classmates and when doing so, they end up lowering their self-esteem. This also makes kids feel shameful about their work which means the students might lose confidence which could lead to them not trying as much. This is because they automatically assume that they will do worse than their peers which is why comparing your achievements with your peers is super harmful to both you and others. 

Within the school of Jackson-Reed, there are many ways we can reduce the bad effects of comparing the students’ achievements: namely, not ranking kids on their academic achievements. On transcripts, you can see where you have ranked within your class academically. When seeing this, you now know where you fall on the academic scale within your class which in most cases brings your confidence down. You now know how many kids have better grades than you overall. 

This caused me to overthink and stress about my grades since I no longer felt like I was doing well in school. These rankings do not justify how smart you are so they feel unnecessary and very harmful. Jackson-Reed needs to be more cautious about giving this information to students without them asking for it. 

Nothing changes the outcome of your personal accomplishments when you compare yourself to your peers. All it does is waste energy, lower your self-esteem, and prevent you from working hard to fulfill your own goals due to it lowering your self-esteem. In conclusion, comparing academic achievements with your peers can be damaging to yourself. I know from experience. So you should try and avoid letting other people’s wins affect you.