If you walk past the Yates tennis courts in the early evening, you may have the pleasure of witnessing a feat of nature: my horrendous tennis playing. Not the worst tennis you will ever see, but far from the best—just good, old-fashioned, below-average playing.
In April 2024, my friends and I, like many others, watched the movie Challengers. We were hooked. It sparked a passion in a group that had never played tennis before. Since then, when we need a moment to decompress, someone sends that familiar text: “Anyone up for some tennis?” and the pilgrimage to Yates begins. What started as a lingering obsession with the new cult-classic movie later transitioned into a way to beat the sophomore slump. As school and internship pressure piled up, the hour spent running around the tennis court, excited over a three-ball rally, became one of the few spaces where those stressors faded away. Though it may sound odd, the cornerstone of why we found playing tennis so cathartic is that we are all bad.
To be on the internet is to be inundated with pressure to be perfect. While scientific studies show that social media leads to heightened notions of perfectionism and anxiety, it does not take a PhD in psychology to see that. Social media feeds constantly display the most impressive outliers in any given field; they also make it seem like these athletic, musical, or beautiful feats are something that the average person should be capable of. Whether through beauty filters, effects, or downright lies, the illusion of perfection on social media is mounting—and anyone with an account can feel it.
This pressure to fit the ideal is especially compounded when it comes to exercise. With the exponential rise in online popularity of workouts like reformer pilates and yoga sculpt, there is an expectation to constantly work out and be flawless while doing so. The “pilates princess” life not only requires perfection in the studio, but in all aspects of life. To be healthy and happy you must wake up by 6 a.m., go to a Corepower class in a matching set and slick-back, drink bone broth and green juice, be home in time to perfectly blow out your hair before working a full day, reset your apartment, take a walk to ensure you are getting 10,000 steps, drink peppermint tea, and take magnesium supplements—all to be in bed by 9 p.m. While not inherently insidious (it is, of course, good to move your body), the issue lies in the expectation to do everything every day. Pop culture constantly tells us, as individuals, to optimize ourselves. Each new optimization is a prerequisite to a fulfilling life, and you are expected to be great before you even start. It only takes a few scrolls on TikTok’s “For You” page to convert simply existing into a non-starter.
The final piece of this expectation is commodification. If you don’t post your achievements in a “Day in My Life” video, then your perfect day did not happen. The ultimate goal of this perfection is profitability. Not only does this discourage you from trying anything new, but it also changes the idea of success. Rather than measuring a day based on quality time spent, life is about interactions, views, and likes.
It is of note that this perfectionism is only exacerbated at Georgetown, where the culture around LinkedIn, straight A’s, law school applications, and that Deloitte return offer permeates every aspect of life. Even if you wanted to try something like badminton, the club sports team has rounds of tryouts.
Luckily, hope remains because social media is not real life. No one is actually checking to make sure that you go to [solidcore] every day. There are many simple ways to break out of this perfectionist feedback loop, but I recommend one: play sports with people, and play them badly. On the surface, this may just be a way to get off your phone. No social media and no doomscrolling will have an outsized impact on quality of life. Many sports are also inherently social, so whether you play with a stranger or your best friend, you are playing the game with someone.
Breaking our isolation through sports is possible at Georgetown, despite the school’s emphasis on perfectionism. Here, all of your friends are in the same place with access to Campus Recreation facilities. If there was ever a time to pick up a sport to play badly, it is here and now. Still, the most important part of this is to be bad at the sport you are playing. The best way to break out of the constant need for perfectionism is to let yourself be imperfect.
Trip on the soccer field. Completely whiff at the tennis ball. Miss every single basket. After laughing it off and leaving the field, court, or pitch with a weight lifted off your shoulders, you’ll have a wonderful realization: no one actually cares. Hitting the net more times than successfully serving the ball in tennis has, in fact, not killed me. No one assumed anything about me, other than the fact that I am just bad at tennis. So, when I get overwhelmed with the need to perfect my life, I am going to continue to fail at tennis. I hope you do the same.
