THE DOBBY COMPLEX

After nearly a year and a half of being a college student, I've observed something that I feel needs to be discussed. (And just to prepare you, I'm going to coin a new term to describe it—right now. I know, I'm freaking out about it, too.)
                                                                                                                              

 I call it "The Dobby Complex."            

                                                                                

For those of you uncultured individuals who are not aware of my friend Dobby, go pick up a Harry Potter book and educate yourselves. I implore you. But in the meantime I suppose I'll explain: Dobby is a house-elf (think slave) for the tyrannical Malfoy family, who constantly mistreat him and cause him to doubt everything that he does. He always believes he makes mistakes, and when this happens, he punishes himself—usually in a very painful and ridiculous manner.

I have come to compare this lovable though mentally deranged character to a certain type of behavior I witness around me on an almost daily basis in college: the unhealthy obsession with perfection. You know those kids in your high school who excelled at everything? The perfect 4.0, scholarship-grabbing, overly-involved, gleaming embodiments of "success?" Those are my classmates. Because I attend a highly competitive university, I take classes with, befriend, and live among these kinds of people—because they're basically the only ones who get accepted. But we can't all continue to be "the best" in such an environment, which means that the risk of failure is always lurking behind every decision, every test, and every opportunity in front of us. And when failure inevitably occurs, a lot of these people don't know how to deal with it. They get a C on their economics test and then they're like "DOBBY MUST IRON HIS HANDS" as they rend their dirty pillowcase togas and run away in shame.

Now, this intense self-deprecation I'm surrounded by typically doesn't occur in a physical sense, like with Dobby. For the most part, these battles are fought within the confines of our minds, are felt in the pits of our stomachs—that nagging, sinking feeling of failure that tells you that you're not good enough. That your worth is purely dependent upon getting an A, cultivating a blossoming social life, or having the perfect body. When you're used to succeeding and everyone around you appears to be, it's almost too easy to be hard on yourself when you mess up. It's almost too easy to get upset and nitpick any and every aspect of yourself. And the more you think this way, the more you come to believe that there is something inherently wrong with you that is preventing you from being the epitome of perfection.

It's not a fun way to live.

I've always been a perfectionist in just about every aspect of my life. Those who know me well can attest to this. Throughout the years, no matter how great life seemed to be, I always found something to be pessimistic and upset about. I would be so hard on myself when there really was so much to celebrate.....and I still feel this way sometimes. I get down on myself when I get a B on a paper (I know, I'm insane), when I sleep in on the weekends (because I always feel like I'm wasting precious time), and when I procrastinate AGAIN and end up staying awake until 2 in the morning to finish an assignment that could have easily been taken care of hours earlier. I always feel that I need to be a better person, and I always turn into Dobby in these moments.

But you know what? You can't be perfect. NONE of us can be or ever will be during our lives. Yes, we can improve, and we SHOULD try to improve, but before we attempt to we need to accept the fact that we won't reach perfection. We can get close, maybe, but we simply can't. And once we remember that, and truly believe that, then we can attempt to progress and better ourselves in a healthy way instead of living under constant stress and the fear of failure. 

And honestly, I've gotten better at dealing with this while I've been here. I've succeeded and failed and learned from all of it. And ironically, failing has helped me become a better person. I've come to realize that we really shouldn't be so scared of failure.

It's all about the way you choose to deal with it.

So let's try to keep Dobby more a part of fiction and less a part of our realities. 

...I think we'll all be a lot happier that way.