"Not Ready for The Real World”: Yale Students on the Pressure to Achieve and American vs Chinese Approaches to Success

Sometimes it's better for me to just sit back, bite my tongue, and then in four years I'll be able to say what I want. There has been a gradual institutionalization of this code of conduct, the effect of which is to prevent people from ventilating their views. Bright students won't put up with it. Buckley fellows believe that all perspectives must.

Be heard and examined in good faith. They stand united against the formation of the liberal only echo chamber.

At Yale, we disagree, we debate, and then at the end of the day, we remain friends.

Welcome everyone to POD and MAN at Yale. I'm the host, Ari Shafer, communications director here at the Buckley Institute. It's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast returning guest Tori Cook, a sophomore.

Hi.

It's a pleasure to be here.

And new to the podcast, Vanessa Lee, a senior.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for joining us, guys. Appreciate it. So what we're going to talk about today is student life and the pressure to be constantly busy on campus, always building your resume. There are many layers to this question, obviously, and it's something that has fed into the bigger questions about higher ed in America and where the funding goes and what happens on campus. So namely, what is higher education for? And how does that filter into your experience as undergraduates? Is it all about getting ready for the job, getting the best job after you graduate, or are you supposed to be thinking about who you are as citizens, how you fit into society? Should undergrad be about building skills so you can succeed in your job, or should you have time to reflect on the morals and the ethics that matter? So what do you guys think? What should college be for? Vanessa?

Yeah, so I think college is a time for you to reflect on personal growth. So much more important than just looking for a job. A lot of college grads don't have a job lined up and that's totally okay because college isn't meant to build up your career skills. In fact, your supposed to do that on your own time. And I think college is a time for you to really be in this college community and explore yourself, which is, I think, a lot more than just career building.

Yeah, I think this is kind of the perennial debate and the question of like liberal education and the idea of whether you're supposed to be gaining technical skills that are employable outside of the academic sphere or if you're supposed to kind of be in this mode of developing skills that form you as a person, kind of shape you into someone who can then go out and successfully gain extra skills and work in the workplace. And I mean, this is why we see things like technical school. So I do think it isn't right prescribed. I don't think there's one thing for which college is for. I think it's a mix of all of them. Of course you want to be employable when you leave, but also it's a time for kind of the formation of the person and to explore a lot of things that you haven't been able to explore before, just by nature of living in house with parents and that sort of thing.

So how do you guys respond to the thought, like as the criticism that undergraduate education is so expensive you spend four years doing it, what's the point of going if you're not just learning how to get a good job afterwards? What's the point if you're not going to get a six figure salary when you graduate? Tori?

Yeah, I think my thoughts on this have changed as I've been at college. I used to think college was kind of the thing that you do if you want to be employable after high school. Whereas now I've kind of changed my mind with things like technical schools and the fact that the Internet can teach you a lot of skills. I don't think that everyone needs to go to college, but I do think that there are specific, you know, job paths that do necessitate college. And so if you want to be in one of those, you should definitely consider college. But really it does come down to kind of what you want to do. And that's actually a really big question and kind of more the problem that I think we're facing with the question of how competitive everything is because it's, you have to sit down and do some hard work about what do I actually want to do and then which things are going to take me there rather than just kind of doing whatever you get funneled into doing because you thought that was kind of the prescribed path.

I think the most important things I got out of my four year education at Yale were anything but technical skills. The networks I have, the friendships I built, those were so much more meaningful and so much more valuable to me than any skills I've gotten from classes. So I think if you are just looking to get a job out of college, you can always go to like technical schools or learn on your own. Software engineering jobs nowadays don't even require you to have a degree, they just require you to know how to code. And that's something anyone can learn on the Internet.

So Yale has a lot of connections to this debate in particular, obviously, Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek Ramaswamy, I think is how you pronounce his name. So I apologize, has been vocal about how part of America's problem is that kids aren't being forced to learn calculus in second grade. They're not being taught, pushed to learn instruments or learn a sport in a very rigorous way, maybe like they used to. And we have Amy Chua, who's in the law school, who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and became a household name over pushing her children to excel in every way, shape or form from when they were young to learn math, learn how to write well, learn how countless other languages. So what does get lost, I guess for students themselves, for the country, for society, when we choose the kind of more esoteric path of learn who you are, learn what you want to do, learn the kind of person you want to be over that kind of Vivek, I guess. AMY CHUA MODEL of no, just learn how to do math, learn how to do engineering, learn how to do a job, learn how to do a skill.

Well, I think the focus on meritocracy is not a bad thing and that it's not taken away from your ability to focus on other things. The good thing about the American education system is that we really value people from all aspects. So you can be a beauty queen and still be a valuatorian, or you can be good at sports and good at music at the same time. So when we say we put a lot of emphasis on meritocracy, it's not diminishing other aspects of yourself.

Yeah, I think one of the big questions here for me is drive and the idea that we need more kind of we need to be driven. I think whatever that that means is a question. But it doesn't have to be in prescribed areas of be good at math, be good at science, whichever kind of career, you know, become a doctor, et cetera, et cetera. These what have been classically considered high paying careers and jobs. I think we're seeing the world change in a way where the, the like compensation landscape is different now and there are a lot of different things that people can do and be successful and be able to provide for themselves and their family. And I think we do need to be driven in chasing those. But again, I do think it has to kind of be something that is developed not in this find yourself way, but kind of in a, you know, exploring what will actually make you happy so that it's not be a doctor, be a doctor, be a Doctor. And actually, I didn't want to be a doctor, and I hate my life.

So I guess to kind of follow on that, what does that look like? Right. What is an undergraduate education where maybe you're not being pushed to just be a doctor or be, I don't know, a technician or a welder. But also isn't just, what do I think about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What's that in between?

Yeah. For this, I would say that, again, there's not really a prescribed option. Right. Balance is something people talk a lot about, very open conversation. But I think sometimes you can be driven by both what you want to do and then also the other factor that I think you need to be looking at is what you're good at. Because if you really like doing something, but you're really, really bad at it, it's probably not the thing that you should be pursuing. Right. And this is where kind of the candid conversation with yourself needs to be had of. You know, I enjoy dancing, but I cannot dance to save my life. So that is not what we're pursuing as a professional career path. Right. But when I evaluate my skills and say, okay, I love reading books and I love doing this, and I like writing and I'm pretty good at it, even if I don' Perhaps the business side of writing, because I'm good at writing, I can do business writing and creative writing and somehow meld these together or, you know, that sort of thing. So I think there are two facets here that you kind of have to be honest with yourself about.

I think it's important to explore variety aspects of yourself by doing many different things and go outside of your niche field. I'm a double major, and I involve with a lot of different clubs on campus, and that taught me a lot of different things from different fields. I think it's important to go out of your own niche area and to see from other the perspectives, which makes you a better thinker overall instead of just focusing on something that's very niche and technical and make that your life career. I think seeing things from different perspectives gives you a better grasp of the overall truth.

So, as I mentioned before, this is wrapped up in obviously larger discussions about American policy, how we raise students, how we raise future generations. And so you kind of look back at what America was and how it defines itself. Talk about being driven. Tory mentioned being driven and what that means and being driven to excel. So how do you see where America's strength lies? It's like the Classic debate, usually pinned as China versus the US about the value of people pursuing their passions versus just learning how to do things, skills we know they need to do well. Where does the American strength and vitality come from? Where does it come from as a society?

I think the US Has a lot of strength because we care about the person holistically and not just focusing on, just focus on their test scores. I know in China they have this exam called Gaokao, which every high school students go through to be admitted into colleges. And that one score determines where you go for college, and where you go determines what you do in life. I think that's a very narrow way of seeing education and seeing a person's potential. And in the US it's a lot more diverse, which gives us an advantage because people here are able to become better thinkers through doing these different things and not just focus solely on academics.

Yeah. I think what we often talk about in this debate is kind of like the American dream and the idea that someone can come kind of start from nothing and make themselves into something. Right. And just kind of another test that I'm thinking about and similar to the example Vanessa gave is, if I'm remembering correctly from my French days, like the back is the test that students will take and is it 8ish grade, 7th or 8th grade, that will then kind of tell them where they're specializing for the rest of their high school career that is then going to, like, tell them which kind of college they're going to go to and so on and so forth. I might be getting the details on this slightly wrong, but it's this idea that you're specializing really, really early. And I think that America has a strength in allowing people to change almost like sometimes on the, you know, like really late in their careers. Right. And still be successful. And that there are measures put in place such that people aren't forced into one box, that they can never leave where it sometimes may feel that way elsewhere. And so I think that really is a strength. But I do also think that with that comes the danger of not providing the basic foundational skills that you need to allow people to kind of be able to select any one of these, you know, paths.

So can you guys, like, think about your own, like, path to Yale? Yale is obviously a very good school. It's known around the world. I think the top ranked, if not the top two or three ranked every year. Think about, like, how you got here, you know, what your upbringing was like. Were you, I mean, how much of it was Internal drive. How much of it was your parents? What were the kind of things that got you to Yale on day one?

It was a lot of internal drive for me because my parents never pushed me beyond what I'm able to do, and they're very lenient. I actually came to us when I was 13 from Hong Kong, and under the Hong Kong education system, I wasn't doing very well, but I excelled in the US Education system because I was given a lot more opportunity to do things outside of academics. And that really pushed me to explore different aspects of myself. And I think this also proves how valuable the US Education system is on the college application. They asked me question on my interests and what are my passions, and they really put emphasis on passion, which is something that Asian countries don't. And I think I excelled in that aspect and I was able to do much, much more better here.

So the experience you had in the Hong Kong schools, was it much more regimented? Like what? You know, it seems you noticed even early On, I mean, 13 years, you know, you're not an adult, but, you know, you're not a kid either.

Yeah, they were really academically driven and everything was ultra competitive. So naturally kids would focus a lot on academics. They would go through these after school programs to do more math after school. And there's very little emphasis on sports and activities outside of just like doing math and academic work. And I think that really limits this child's ability to explore himself in different lights.

What were the kind of things you found when you got to the States that you didn't have in the Hong Kong education system?

Yes, I have a lot more free time after school because I, I stopped going to these after school academic programs. So I was able to just tinker with other activities on my computer and learn a lot more about different areas of studies that, that I was drawn to. I became very interested in science and as we came to Yale as a biomedical engineering major before I pivoted to mechanical engineering. And I think just being able to tinker with different things and having that freedom of time to think about different things allowed me to better understand what is it that I really wanted to do.

How about you, Tori? What was your path to Yale like?

Yeah, I'd say mine's a little bit similar in that my parents were never pushing me to succeed and excel in school. I remember my mom telling me, like, please get a C and go to sleep on one of those nights when I was staying up till midnight trying to pound out a paper. And so it really was kind of my sense of internal drive. But really, I think I was blessed with an environment and parents that fostered my love of life. So there were a lot of things that I enjoyed doing, and I had the opportunity to kind of explore each of those to the full. I went to a lot of different schools. I kind of jumped around a lot between moving and then just going to various different schools, depending on what it was that I wanted to do on any given year. And I think this allowed me to explore a lot of the things that I was interested in. Although, I mean, the American system, I think, like Vanessa was saying, I think it is a little bit more lenient. So if you don't have that drive, there is a danger there that you end up not doing or taking advantage of the opportunities that you do have before you and then ending up unhappy in a different way than if you're, you know, if you have parents or a school system that regiments that every moment of your day.

So do you guys think the, I guess, the losses for students who aren't driven and therefore aren't pushed to, I guess, exceed what they would have otherwise driven themselves to don't outweigh the benefits or I guess, do you think it's better to allow students who are driven in and of themselves to pursue what they want than to have a system where everyone is driven, even if the driven students are driven away from the things they would otherwise be interested and passionate about?

Yeah, because I think. I think those students are miserable. They keep being in the system that they don't want to be in. And I know some friends in the UK where they enter college and the program that they chose from their first year has to be the program that they finished. They're not able to switch around or change major like we can here at Yale. And I know they are not enjoying their time there.

Tori?

Yeah, I think I'd agree. And it's perhaps it's for selfish reasons. And the idea that I don't want to be forced to choose my future career. I would not have wanted to have been forced to choose my future career at the age of 18 or even younger sometimes, where, you know, hopefully, you know, barely a quarter of my life has been accomplished at this point. And the idea that you're then going to force someone into, you know, sticking with that, I think the consequences really can be devastating. And people can develop drive when they realize that what they've been doing is not going to get them where they want to go. I mean, that creates a different problem. But I do think it's better to kind of allow people to explore the things that they're interested in.

I want to pull this to the Yale campus. And one of the things that drove me, I guess, pun intended, to have this conversation was an Atlantic article that was written, I think, back in September 2023, and it talked about how competitive Yale's clubs. I didn't go to Yale undergrad. I went to Johns Hopkins. And there were a few clubs, like the a cappella clubs, where you had to be able to sing in the bands, you had to be able to play an instrument. There were a few other very, very competitive clubs that you had to apply to. But other than that, if you wanted to, I don't know, join the environmental club, you could. There was a squirrel chasing club and whatever. They would chase squirrels. I don't know why, but they would do that. But then when I started working here and I found out you have to apply to literally everything at Yale. So we kind of make. The Atlantic article pointed out how that makes the undergrad experience so much more competitive. And you can't sometimes pursue things that you know at other places you could because the club requires experience in it already. Do you think that method makes sense? Do you think it makes sense to kind of weed out some of the students from these clubs? Do you think there should be kind of like a free for all, at least as far as student interests go?

Yeah, I'd maybe like. I think the article is probably right. But at the same time, some of these are applications kind of. You just have to fill out the application to prove that you're interested. Right. Which is one way of weeding out like zero buy in. But other than that, you know, it's kind of easy to join. But we do definitely have our very competitive clubs. And I think that there is a good element in that. You start to exhibit, you know, the desire to be in the club and like, it creates the buy in in the process of joining the club rather than allowing people to join. And then you have an organization with 300 members and only 20 people ever really show up. Right. Which happens a lot. But I also think that this has the danger that people see things as exclusive and join them because they're exclusive, not because they want to. Right. That's the other flip side. So you could end up in five different clubs that were exclusive and you wanted to get in so that you could put them on your resume and realize you don't actually like what you're doing in any of the five Clubs, but you feel the need to be doing a lot of things because the other people around you are.

Yeah, So I read the Atlantic article and I disagree with it. I think it was missing a lot of the things that Yale provides. Like it mentioned that all the clubs are ultra competitive, but they are clubs that are not competitive, that you can just apply and join, like the cultural clubs. And I think a lot of the clubs that were competitive were career based clubs like the finance organization or the tech organizations. And I also do think that this is the right way to do clubs. I think the best clubs are the most competitive clubs and that meritocracy works really well in this case. The applications usually require a lot of time and effort. So if you want to prove that you're serious about the club, you should put in that time and effort to apply for these clubs. And I also don't think that students who are experienced are the ones that are chosen to join the club. Sometimes a more novice individual were chosen over someone who has a lot of experience. Because as club leaders, we know that the novice person can get more out of this organization than someone who is already experienced. So you do have to put faith in this system.

Although I would say that the instances that I've seen where novices are chosen, it's usually because they often had extensive experiences in high school. Right. Whereas they're new and they're fresh, but they have kind of experience in an adjacent field where they see a lot of potential. And yes, technically they're novice, but they've also still done a lot of things. So I would, you know, I don't know that it's entirely.

So I think it also depends on what kind of candidates the club is choosing, and that really is entirely dependent on the president and the vice president and the cabinet. I think students also need to understand that rejection from one club doesn't determine the failure. Like, they shouldn't see this as a failure because they will face so many more rejections in real life.

If you're upset over, like getting rejected.

From this volunteering club, then you are not ready for the real world.

It gets worse than Yale guys. It gets worse. But so I guess to kind of, I guess, round this out, do you guys think having to apply for these groups makes Yale more competitive or do you think it's just an understandable entry barrier to weed out people who aren't interested?

Well, if you get rejected from one club, you can always try out for other things. There are like hundreds and thousands of clubs on campus. I'm sure you can get into at least one. So I don't think it's the end of the world if you don't.

Yeah. I think it's understandable, of course, to have an application process for a club. I do think that's a good idea. I also think that kind of the competitiveness at Yale is probably just driven by the students. You, I think, to some degree, have to be at least a little bit competitive to get into Yale in the first place. Right. You're reaching for a very big dream there, and you've positioned yourself in a particular way through kind of the. Even. Just the way that you are. Even if you weren't planning to attend yet, which I wasn't. That you come with this sense of competitiveness, and the clubs kind of reflect the way that we are, rather than the clubs turning us into more competitive people.

Yeah. So I was going to ask whether this is whether it makes sense. I guess I've asked whether it makes sense to have this kind of competitive aspect to the clubs, how clubs work. But I realize to Tori's point, that's almost an unfair question. Right. You've got to yell by being competitive whether you're competing with others or competing with your. Or some combination of both. Right. You couldn't. No one could really expect you guys to stop being ambitious and stop being competitive the second you got to Yale. Right?

Yeah. And I think whether you like it or not, competitiveness is inevitable. If you want to have the best clubs, you are going to have it, have to make it exclusive. And there's limited resources, there's limited number of people we can take in a club, and there's limited budget for that club. So naturally, there is a lot of constraint. I was able to see from the other side, as an upperclassman when I was admitting underclassmen into a club that I was running. And frankly, we want to take as many people as we can, but we have limited capacity to do that.

Does it ever get tiring being so competitive all the time, like, as. Like in a personal capacity. Do you ever, like, get tired?

Yeah, 100%. 100%, yeah. And I think it's. I guess it's that unfortunate thing that you end up living with. And there are moments where you realize you have taken on too many things and you need to scale it back. And it's really hard because everything in you says, no, I need. I can do more, I can keep doing more. I need to keep doing this thing. And sometimes you recognize that's just not the case. So it can be really exhausting. You can put yourself in situations where you have just overextended yourself. I had this experience last semester and the result of it was that I'd end up sick every other weekend because I was doing too many things and not sleeping because you kind of have to make those choices. But I also wouldn't say that I would necessarily do it differently. Like the getting sick definitely would do that differently. But the level of kind of competitiveness and the relationships that I form through going after things with people by my side because it's not every man for himself has not been my experience or how I felt. It's you're joining a community of and joining a group of people that you get along with and are interested in the same things when you're going for a club. So there's a sense in which you get to build these relationships at the same time as you're being competitive together. And it's very supportive as well.

Yeah. And I think it's only tiring if you don't enjoy what you're doing. If you love the process and you love the club, everything is worth it.

So where do you go if you want to just learn something or study something together with your peers? With zero competition.

I think there are certain clubs for beginners that you can join to explore. So don't go for the ultra competitive clubs that require prior experiences. You can always find clubs that take in freshmen with no experience. And I mean if not clubs, you can take a few classes or read a few books on it. There are so many ways to learn about a topic than to be joining and competing for these clubs.

Yeah. And I think. I think two things. One being that a lot of clubs and organizations on campus departments will put on lectures and you have the opportunity to just go learn from experts in areas and these things are advertised. Definitely take advantage of them. And I've had a lot of great experiences there. The other thing being just kind of. That's seems to me what like friend groups are for. And so I'll go to a lecture with a group of friends and then afterwards we'll chat about it and get dinner. Right. Or I've had a group of friends interested in a particular thing. And so we started a little reading group where we said, hey, we all want to read this thing. We're going to be accountability partners for reading this thing. And then you learn a little bit more about the topic. So I think the relationships that you develop with people as you get to know them better and Learn what their interests are and how they intersect with yours. Those start to be the places in which you let each other know about opportunities, where you can go and hear a lecture from somebody or attend a field day somewhere. And that's a good place to not have a competitive environment.

So running out of time. So I want to ask you kind of one final wrap up question. Yale, as I mentioned before, produces some of the leaders of the world, Congressmen, presidents, Supreme Court justices, leaders in other countries also is, while some of this competition is internally driven by your own ambition, by your own drive to learn more, to excel. Is that good? Is that good for you as individuals? Is that good for Yale as a community that engenders learning? And ultimately, with what Yale is in mind, is it good for the country and good for the world?

That's a great question. And I. Because again, the downside is that it does kind of, Yale does kind of keep you trapped in the rat race, I guess, so to speak. Even if you want to get out, there are times where you say, okay, I want to do a little bit less, but you don't feel like you can because everyone around you is still going. And this mentality and attitude stays with you. This is one reason why people from Yale become so successful is because they've kind of drilled into you these skills and helps you create these networks that then kind of, you know, hoist you up to success if that's what you're going for. And so I, I think that it can be good, but it also can be bad. And this is where you need kind of the introduction of something like a, for lack of a better term, just like moral compass and framework that guides you in the determination of making sure that you're not clawing your way up at the expense of other people. This is something that sometimes I'll see in clubs where it gets really ugly with people stepping over people or going behind people's backs, which is just very unpleasant to witness, especially among people that I consider friends. And to know that this continues after college is concerning. Right. And the introduction of some sort of, you know, system of knowing what you want and then being able to moderate what you want in terms of, like, what is good moral social conduct is the other thing that you need, which is where, like a liberal arts education and the moral formation of the person is another really important aspect of the university.

I think even though it may feel like you have to, you're pressured to do what other people are doing here at Yale, and you feel very pressured to achieve a certain way. You actually don't have to follow that. If at any point you're burnt out, you can always take a gap year, take a pause, get out of the system to do something else, and then come back, refresh. And I think. I think it's almost an illusion that people think we have to keep running on this rat race and be very pressured to do things that you're not comfortable with. And if you feel that way, you need to take a break. Like I said, it's not tiring if you're doing something you're passionate about. So you got to find the subject that you are passionate about so that it's not another burden, another thing you have to do.

You think it's good that this is a good.

I think it is good. It's good to have this kind of pressure to push you to achieve better, but make sure that you are directing the pressure in the direction that you want it to be at. Like, if you're interested in one subject, don't go and do, like, other irrelevant stuff. Just focus on what you like.

Well, thanks so much for joining me, Tori, Vanessa, I appreciate you guys coming on the podcast.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much.

No interview this episode, just the students in their own words. Thanks for joining us for another great episode of Pod and Man @ Yale. Give us a like and subscribe if you haven't already. And always remember, for God, for country, and for Yale, in that order.