In defense of performative studying

“Performative studying,” the act of studying excessively in public to appear studious and hardworking to your peers, seems like an oxymoron. How could something that used to be “nerdy” and uncool be performative? Who would want to be perceived as someone who’s always studying? 

But as most people at Notre Dame can attest, here the person who studies the least usually doesn’t want people to know about it. How long you can lock in at the library feels like a genuine reflection of your moral worth; everyone wants to be “busy” all the time.

My friend disagrees with me that performative studying even exists here; she argues everyone is too genuinely busy to have time to be performative. There aren’t that many “study influencers” at ND, she argued. Why perform if you’re not going to film it? 

I disagree — I believe this type of studying runs rampant on campus. I think people are performing all the time, genuinely studying, but doing so in a way that can be inefficient or downright ineffective. Think about it like this: we all have a perfectly functioning dark desk under our lofted beds, complete with a (grossly powerful) fluorescent light and a chair that (while not at all comfortable) definitely gets the job done. If we all wanted to do our work as quickly as possible and do other things, why not just do everything as quickly as possible, mere feet from our beds? Why put on a sweater and mascara and trek through the snow on a Saturday morning when you could legitimately, and more quickly, write your paper in your dorm lounge? Why print out and highlight your readings in pastel colors, copy your science-related diagrams (not a STEM major, best I can do) on the big whiteboards or color-code a to-do list you’ll forget to ever cross off? 

The answer, to all these questions and to the original (why perform studying just for yourself?), is that we have to. I know from personal experience that sometimes, romanticizing my study experience is the only way to make myself study at all; I may not perfectly understand everything I read on a six-hour study bender, but at least I’m engaging with the material at all. Dressing up and working in public, where I am at least accountable to the imaginary people around me I’m studying for, is sometimes the only thing that makes me work at all. If anything gets done, then the performance is worth it. 

I think performative studying is necessary for anyone who isn’t naturally inclined to study as much as most people have to at this school. After all, if you’re going to do something all the time, you might as well enjoy it as much as possible. 

My only warning is not to get too caught up in the romanticization of your academic life. Sometimes it’s fun to be Pinterest-level organized and match your iPad background to your favorite TikTok study motivators, but other times, it’s nice to just get it done. Don’t enjoy the aesthetics of studying to the point where you sacrifice quickly submitting a discussion post from bed or doing a reading without decorating your notes. When you get to the point that the aesthetics are taking longer than the work, you’ve gone too far. 

Notre Dame is, academically, a great school; however, most people I know who got in here were also accepted to other schools that were as great or even better academically. We chose ND for a lot of reasons — don’t let the appearances of being a smart and busy student take away from your time engaging with the culture, campus and balanced experience that ND is meant to be. Even the best actors need to take time off.