Double Standards of Success

There are so many double standards in the world, however none of them are greater than the double standard of success.

As you probably know, this is the time of year in which college acceptance letters are mailed and received. Second semester seniors already know, or just found out which colleges they have been accepted to. Obviously, there will be a select few that are accepted into the prestigious and fabled ivy leagues.

In every school, there is that senior who is super accomplished, super prestigious, and super successful. There is that type of senior in my school, and in fact, she is a friend. To protect her identity I shall refer to her as Bene. (which means "successful" in Lain) To give you some background on Bene, she is not the pretentious type that you would expect to be accepted into an Ivy League. She's down to earth, very nice, mature, and secretly inappropriate and funny. I don't know what other colleges she was accepted to, however I know that she was accepted to Dartmouth, Yale, and Harvard. Pretty awesome, right?

I run a "Humans Of..." page for my school that is inspired by the popular blog Humans of New York. I featured Bene on my page, and if you are familiar with Humans of New York, they often interview the person they feature. I asked Bene, "What worries you the most about the future?" Part of her response was, "I'm trying to choose a college. I hope I'm not sounding pretentious right now, but I'm choosing between Harvard and Yale. I know people are going to give me flak for this, but it really is the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life!

I was surprised that Bene got some backlash for mentioning that she was choosing between Harvard or Yale. One comment said, "The biggest worry about the future is whether you go to Harvard or Yale? Rough life." 

This highlights the double standard on Ivy League colleges. If you get in one, you would be very excited and proud, however if you didn't you'd probably think, "Whatever. People who are accepted are too pretentious." Also, if Bene was talking about choosing between Boston College and Boston University, no one would care that she mentioned the names of the colleges. Not that BC and BU are bad schools, they are just not as famous or held in prestige as Harvard or Yale. 

What really annoys me is when people who did not get accepted into their dream Ivy League school say things like, "Your college doesn't determine how successful you will be" or "Getting into an Ivy League doesn't make you successful" I totally agree that your college does not determine you successful you will end up in life, however when someone says,  "Getting into an Ivy League doesn't make you successful" I want to  scream, "Bitch, get your jealous ass self away from this planet. I know for a fact that if you got into an Ivy League, you'd be rubbing that acceptance letter in everyone's' face. Stop your goddamn hating!" (sorry but not sorry for the vulgar words!)

My super classy (not really) note to the haterz:

stfu cuz you all jealous

Honestly, the double standards of success are derived from jealousy. After all, "Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius." -Fulton J. Sheen

In a myopic sense, getting into a prestigious college, or the college of your dreams is the biggest success of your life. However, in a long term sense, your success is determined by your accomplishments of the goals you set for yourself, whether that is writing a novel, service trips abroad, landing your dream job, or becoming a millionaire. Don't let the fact that you did not get accepted into your dream college ruin your sense of success, and don't let the jealous haters prevent you from being proud to get accepted into an Ivy.