Duck Syndrome: A Culture of Unspeakable Suffering
Jake couldn’t be more proud of his high school accomplishments and where those landed him. A valedictorian from his local public high school, Jake participated in a national-level debate competition his senior year, founded a volunteer organization for youths in his hometown, and earned 5s on all seven AP exams he took. After years of intensive profile-building, he finally stood before Stanford — his #1 school since childhood. It was there that he met Beom-seok, his FLI Korean American roommate who received a full-ride financial aid from Stanford. Despite differences in backgrounds and personalities, the duo clicked well during New Student Orientation and became good friends. Yet, six weeks in did Jake notice something odd. Bombarded with a huge pile of assignments and mandatory club activities, Jake often came back to the room seeing Beom-seok sleeping, listening to music on Spotify, or hanging out with his friends; it was as though Beom-seok already got everything figured out. What Jake did not realize was that Beom-seok had been struggling with adapting to college, a place where he felt his identity as FLI was implicitly threatened and minoritized by his peers from a higher socioeconomic status. Though sharing the same room 24/7, both never discussed their personal struggles — instead choosing to keep their problems private.
This story is not uncommon among Stanford students during their freshman year, the time they must face a swift transitioning from high school to a more fast-paced, more competitive, and more intensive college environment. More often than not, this sudden change often comes unexpected for those who were ‘big fish in a small pond’ in high school; many people feel incompetent once they meet their ‘equally, if not more, talented’ college friends, making them wonder about their fit-ins. You and I both make it here, yet why can you do [insert name here] with such a breeze while I suffer so much doing the same thing? Consequently, these students feel like they need to work strenuously to ‘match their friend’s level’ while maintaining their serene fronts, just so they can have a sense of belonging in a community where everyone looks as if they had things figured out.
In fact, Stanford students are often reminded of ‘Duck Syndrome,’ an analogy used to describe this impression of invincibility and calmness. Imagine a duck floating in a duck pond at some park. On the surface the duck looks relaxed and happy, gliding on the surface of the water with a backdrop of a nice and serene park. Yet, underneath the surface is a totally different story; actually the duck is flapping its tiny feet manically to stay afloat. This ‘staying above water’ analogy can be attributed to college students who may look calm on the outside. But in reality, they are struggling to ‘fake it until they make it,’ or to keep it together in the face of the academic, social, and community demands put on them in their efforts to succeed at getting a college education.
You and I both make it here, yet why can you do [insert name here] with such a breeze while I suffer so much doing the same thing?
This so-called myth of students feigning their calmness is not totally unfounded at Stanford, for many current students and alumni did speak out about their experiences with Duck Syndrome. For instance, Arifeen Rahman, a student at the Stanford School of Medicine, talks about her time during a ski trip to Lake Tahoe when she snuck away from her group of friends at 6am to work on her assignments in secret (Rahman, 2019). Wanting to complete her schoolwork while also hiding her inability to manage her time efficiently, Rahman believes it was the best course of action she could have chosen at that time. Tiger Sun also writes an Op-Ed on The Stanford Daily that he views his experience on campus as ‘shrouded in a cloud of superficiality’ where ‘everyone puts on a brave face and a wide smile when we go to classes and meet our friends, but on the inside, the pressure is slowly tearing us apart’ (Sun, 2018). Both stories suggest that Stanford is a place where, quite often, everyone puts on a ‘Yes-I’m-totally-okay’ smile when meeting others. Yet at the same time everyone has his/her own concerns which we choose not to disclose.
Although the word Duck Syndrome was coined at Stanford to describe this culture of unspoken agony, other highly selective universities also witness this similar phenomenon on their campuses. George Gerber, a Dartmouth student, uses the exact wording in the title of his article “Duck Syndrome: What’s beneath the Water?” to discuss his struggle with work-life balance and his inner desire to hide this insecurity. He also reveals that the counselor he meets at Student Wellness Center tells him many of his peers are also in the same situation, implying he is not the only student who suffers from Duck Syndrome (Gerber, 2020). Another allusion to Duck Syndrome is found in an article written by Thrive Global, an organization advocating for healthy mental wellness for college students. Though not directly using the term verbatim, the article mentions the stress culture at Princeton where students are “pressured to achieve impressive grades, form meaningful friendships and networks, gain admission to clubs, plan for a prosperous professional life, and seem happy” (Aftel, 2019). There is also a common term called ‘Penn Face’ used to describe a similar phenomenon at the University of Pennsylvania. As summed up by the experiences of many exchange students, the term is used to describe “Penn’s culture of perfection, which pressures students to appear put together academically and socially while hiding their insecurities” (Maheshwari, 2018). All these personal accounts point out the atmosphere at many colleges where students are projecting an air of invulnerability and perfection while hiding any implicit emotions related to struggle or pain.
Besides these individual experiences related to Duck Syndrome, statistics also show that this stress culture is neither personal nor minor. In a 2014 National Survey of College Counselling Centers, 94 percent out of more than 200 counselling center directors say recent trends point to a greater number of students with severe psychological problems (Gallagher, 2015). Many of these students also report feeling inadequate compared to their peers and that they are fearful of being pointed out as ‘the weak ones.’ Another survey by the American College Health Association on around 80000 students also shows that 86 percent of respondents felt overwhelmed, 54 percent felt overwhelming anxiety and about 32 percent were so depressed that they found it difficult to function in school (Sim, 2016). These results, therefore, reveal that students putting on a show and hiding their struggle is a common scene among many colleges.
Given that Duck Syndrome is a nontrivial issue, I hope to analyze the underlying factors for Duck Syndrome that is widespread at many higher institutions. My argument is that there are two main factors: internal — which is individual’s struggling with prescribed pressure to be perfect by society and the fear of being exposed; and external — a change in societal norm towards embracing neoliberalism, which further perpetuates perfectionism among younger generations of college students.
Internal Factor: Perfectionism and Avoidance
Perfectionism is ingrained deeply in American culture. We put emphasis on athletic tournaments, educational settings, and work environments that reward flawless performance. For this reason, Olympic medalists, perfect test scorers, and self-made billionaires are idolized. These people tend to have perfectionist habits — setting a clear standard beyond what ordinary people could achieve and working hard to attain such goals. As quoted by Linda Silverman, a licensed clinical and counseling psychologist who has worked closely with over 6000 gifted students, “the root of excellence is perfectionism. It is the driving force in the personality that propels the individual toward higher and higher goals. There is a strong correlation between perfectionism and giftedness. I have yet to meet a gifted person who wasn’t perfectionistic in some way” (Silverman, 1999). Despite this positivity associated with perfectionism, many psychology researchers believe that perfectionism is a double-edged sword which serves as a root cause of Duck Syndrome. As Jessica Pryort, one of the core faculty members at Northwestern University’s Counseling Program, claims: “Perfectionism is a sophisticated construct, and understanding the nuances of perfectionism helps us get to the bottom of Duck Syndrome” (NU-MAC, 2021). Because of the high dimensionality, there are many accepted models for perfectionism.
One popular model classifies perfectionism into two types: adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism, the latter of which typifies students suffering from Duck Syndrome. Best explained in the article “Impact on Perfectionism: The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent,” adaptive perfectionists are those who set consistently high standards for their own performance but do not dwell on past failures, whereas maladaptive perfectionists set high standards for themselves and are preoccupied with their flaws and mistakes (Hill, 2017). Striving toward high standards in a healthy manner can provide a challenge, strengthen, and be part of the learning process for healthy perfectionists. And when met with failure, healthy perfectionists are resilient, being able to learn from their mistakes and remain engaged with their goals. On the other end of this binary spectrum are maladaptive perfectionists: individuals who lack resilience and are preoccupied with the discrepancy between their excessively high standards and their imperfect performance. This definition captures the essence of people who suffer from Duck Syndrome. As college students, maladaptive perfectionists are too hard on themselves — tormented at a sight of a point missed on the final or saddened that they will have to finish their problem sets on Friday night while their dormmates go out ‘to have some fun.’
Facing the setbacks, maladaptive perfectionists often rely on less-effective coping strategies such as avoidance and self-blame. In fact, there’s often a belief among maladaptive perfectionists that if they don’t hide their mistakes, their managers, professors, or friends may not admire them or may not think they’re good enough. This has become such a norm — so much so that there is an unspoken rule among college students that no one talks about the overwhelming amounts of work and stress because ‘that’s the way it is.’ In the article “Suicide among College Students,” it was mentioned that “only 11 of the 25 students who committed suicide [from 1920–1955 were seen in the Department of Mental Hygiene and Psychiatry” (Parrish, 1957). This means more than half of helpless students who were suffering enough to end their lives chose to avoid seeking help for a myriad of reasons. In “The Many Faces of Perfectionism,” Benson writes, “hopelessness and psychological distress among college students could be predicted by the interaction between perfectionism and avoidance coping — dealing with problems by avoiding them — but not by perfectionism or avoidance coping alone” (Benson, 2003). Mental health issues don’t just ‘happen’ because of the drive for perfection. The interrelation between perfectionism and avoidance of the fact that they need help is what causes severe mental health issues. By avoiding the problem and denying their flaws altogether, college students are adding fuel to the fire and making things exponentially worse than they already were. This aspect of not admitting their defeat and sweeping their vulnerabilities under the rugs, therefore, completes the image of Duck Syndrome.
Another popular model classifies perfectionists into three types and points out that students with Duck Syndrome avoid showing signs of struggle because they believe other people will be critical if they open up about their flaws. In their novel research paper “Perfectionism in the Self and Social Contexts: Conceptualization, Assessment, and Association with Psychopathology,” Hewitt and Flett introduce a theory that perfectionists can be categorized into three types, namely
1) Self-oriented perfectionists who struggle to live up to their high standards and are at risk of self-critical depression.
2) Other-oriented perfectionists who expect others to be perfect and are often critical of others who fail to meet these expectations.
3) Socially prescribed perfectionists who are desperate to live up to an ideal they falsely believe others are expecting from them (Hewitt & Flett, 1991).
College students fall under the third category — they often set an unrealistically high goal because they feel as though they must be perfect in all aspects in order to live up to the expectation of other people. For this reason, they are overly concerned with gaining the approval of others, desperately seeking social affirmation from individuals whom they view as being overly critical and unfair, and reacting with higher degrees of sensitivity to societal rejection. The consequences of seeking validation from others and critical of nonacceptance can be detrimental. These psychopathologies (a term which means abnormal behaviors and mental distresses) include, but not limited to, obsessive compulsive behavior, Imposter syndrome, anxiety, burnout, depression, and in worst case, suicidal ideation.
External Factor: Neoliberalism, Meritocracy, Demanding Parental Upbringing
Many researchers also hold that perfectionism and avoidance alone are only internal components that do not explain Duck Syndrome as a whole; they believe external societal and cultural factors help exacerbate Duck Syndrome among college students. In “Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016,” the author discovers that there is an evident rise in all three types of perfectionism as mentioned in Hewitt and Flett’s model among millennials, due to a drastic transformation of American cultural fabrics (Curran et al., 2019). Specifically, the proportion of self-oriented perfectionists and other-oriented perfectionists increase by 10 percent and 16 percent respectively. Astonishingly, the proportion of socially prescribed perfectionists increase by over 30 percent. This implies that cultural changes play a huge role in driving up the number of people who will potentially suffer from Duck Syndrome.
One of the key factors which the author believes intensifies perfectionism is the rise of neoliberalism that results in a more competitive individualistic society. As explained in the paper, in the past three decades cultural values in the United States, Canada, and the UK have transitioned to a more neoliberal society, where market distortions fashioned by state interventionism are minimized, slowly replaced by efforts to foster unconstrained competition between self-interested individuals (Curran et al., 2019). Younger generations who grow up in this era internalize this cultural frame, construing a sense of self and identity by becoming more individualistic. For example, more recent generations of college students in America report higher levels of narcissism, extroversion, and self-confidence — all of which are traits of individualistic people. At the same time, communal traits have waned, as students show less empathy toward others and are more likely to blame victims when things go wrong. They also spend less time doing group activities for fun and more time doing individual activities for instrumental value or sense of personal achievement. Because of this self-centered focus, younger generations believe that people who become successful on their own merit deserve an accolade. Consequentially, people who fail, fail on their own and deserve a criticism. This overarching sentiment of individual success/failure drives young people to conceal their flaws and struggles from other people, for fear of being looked down upon.
Another crucial driving force of perfectionism is associated with the rise of competition and social climbing. Young people are preoccupied with upward social comparison, experience considerable status anxiety, and value materialism (Curran et al., 2019). Besides dissatisfied with what they currently have, they are also more dissatisfied with who they are. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat play a further role in perpetuating the feeling of inadequacy among younger people. According to a study by Dr. Ethan Kross, founder of Emotion and Self Control Laboratory at University of Michigan, social media and depression and social anxiety are linked directly (Wilkins, 2016). Using filters and Photoshop to apply this ‘flawless’ representation sends out incredibly unhealthy ‘goal’ images. These exclusive highlight reels of ‘frenzied and wonderful’ moments are not accurate portrayals of a more ‘stable and mundane’ reality; yet, they are so convincing that many people feel like these snapshots are real. Once people begin to compare themselves to these falsified images, social anxiety, depression, self-hate and envy can arise as a result. Exposure to others’ picture-perfect self-representations within social media often leaves many college students to feel inferior as their struggling experiences seem singular. In short, younger generations internalize unrealistic perception and ideals of the perfectible self that, to them, are desirable. Broadly speaking, then, the surging levels of perfectionism are correlated to how young people are coping — to feel secure, connected, and worthwhile — in neoliberalism’s culture of competitive individualism.
Meritocratic culture, an appendage of neoliberalism, also drives up perfectionist sentiments among younger generations of college students, as they see performing well in schools as a means for fulfilling their senses of worthiness. At its core, meritocracy is an ideal where “the perfect life and lifestyle — encapsulated by achievement, wealth, and social status — are available to anyone provided you try hard enough” (Frank, 2016). According to meritocracy, people who study at top schools or gain entry to high-income jobs receive their due rewards of wealth and social status. On the other hand, people who do not reach such educational and professional heights are less deserving because their poor accomplishment reflects their lacking abilities to ‘make it to the top’ (Curran et al., 2019). The doctrine of meritocracy therefore falsely and deceptively ties in the principles of educational and professional achievement, status, and wealth with innate personal value. Sequentially, individuals are pressured to strive toward and perform to achieve success. We can see this in how young generations believe in personal value from educational and professional achievement, status, and wealth. They are taught that the principles of meritocracy are fair and are compelled to demonstrate their merit by setting increasingly unrealistic goals and defining themselves in terms of personal achievement. This push to become successful drives many students to become perfectionists, sparing no effort to attain high standards and goals in college and restricting their values in the strict terms of personal achievement.
The last factor mentioned by Curran is parental upbringing, as parents facing a culture of perfectionism put pressure on their children to adopt perfectionist mindsets. As claimed earlier, neoliberalism and meritocracy have shaped a culture where everyone is expected to reach an ugly state of unattainable expectations and extremes. For parents, this culture confers an additional burden: not only do they have to succeed, but also do their children. This internalized concern for one’s child’s success has been labeled child-contingent self-esteem and is evident in the rise of parental expectations for their children’s achievements which, across the industrialized world, are at extremes that psychologists have noted are cause for concern (Curran et al., 2019). Pressure to raise successful children in a culture that emphasizes monetary wealth and social standing has increased anxious and controlling parenting. Either inadvertently or deliberately, parents pass their own achievement anxieties on to their children, encouraging younger generations to adopt extremely high standards to avoid criticism and gain the approval of their parents.
The Four Horsemen of the (Perfectionism) Apocalypse
Duck Syndrome is a term used to describe a scene where college students hide their insecurities from other people and instead pretend that they are doing fine. Such phenomenon is prevalent among many higher institutions, implying that the issue is neither personal nor minor. As many psychologists and researchers suggest, perfectionism is an internal factor that causes Duck Syndrome. Students who face setbacks from their highly unrealistic goals feel the urge to caches their misery and failure. In a modern time where neoliberalism is embraced by our society, competitiveness, individualism, meritocracy, and parental upbringings are the resulting external factors that help drive up perfectionism among college students. With a better understanding of what cause Duck Syndrome, we can hopefully promote a better environment in college where everyone still strives for goals but also learns that it is totally fine, if not encouraged, to reveal their insecurities when they need time for recovery. It is high time that we realize everyone is just a human being — that imperfection is a part of our identity and we should embrace it with open arms. Such positive mindset will foster a culture that is not only healthy but also conducive to learning.
Adapted from PWR2 RBA Final Paper
