Viral ambition

The mornings are cold, and the days are long in our nation’s capital. The sights on the commute to work resemble a silent frenzy — you see a mass of tired, yet focused, eyes on their way to work, each carrying a sense of urgency written in by their hurried strides on and off crowded metro cars. There are no passing smiles or conversations. Stern, nearly somber, faces remain absorbed in their private worlds as the train’s relentless clacking fills the void left by our silence.

For the past semester, I have gotten well acquainted with this morning scene. Washington runs at a feverish pace. There is always something happening, somewhere, and of some kind of significance. The gate-kept nature of these occurrences only adds to the self-assumed “importance” that most Washingtonians carry. I think of it as FOMO of the highest order — it is not a trip or a hangout you could be missing. It is a job or a networking opportunity. It is hard to avoid this sickness. Conversations about careers, internships and post-grad plans are virtually impossible to escape. Murmurs of law school preparation and job application season anxiety linger in the air. Every computer screen is contaminated with resumes and cover letters, all behind blank Google screens meant to hide from the embarrassment of applying to jobs on the WiFi of your current one. Soon enough, you catch the cold. The symptoms arrive in bunches — your career plans consume you, and the ceaseless desire to achieve begins to set in. Hours are spent scouring job sites, but something feels off. Maybe you are falling behind. Not doing enough. Comparisons, conversations and coffee chats — none of them remedy your ailment.

This sickness — careerism — hides in plain sight, rewarding obsession over conviction and molding purpose into positioning. Washington is the perfect incubator; the city is flooded with ambition, qualifications and expertise. Everyone appears to have a personal agenda, a plan or a clear, identifiable end goal. Naturally, you follow suit, attempting to blend life and career aspirations into difficult-to-attain titles. Now, you are no longer just symptomatic — you are contagious. Careerism, in its lightest form, has taken root.

This concept is neither revelatory nor unique. Aspects of this disorder are commonplace among high-achieving higher educational circles, often without harm. Selecting classes based on GPA protection instead of genuine academic intrigue can pass as benign — the same goes for joining and applying for leadership positions in clubs out of “necessity” instead of interest. The more you age, the underlying calculus of success becomes more apparent. There is a game to be played and moves to be made; whether or not you decide to participate is the only autonomy you are afforded. I won’t deny the existence of this “game,” nor will I attempt to shame those for playing it. It was the quiet assumption we all carried after opening our acceptance letters to Notre Dame — we knew our school could provide us with greater chances at finding our versions of success.

Being ambitious and having goals are not inherently malignant traits. This differentiation has been made before, and the economic pressures facing students are clear — tuition costs are only increasing, and the post-grad job market is becoming an increasingly treacherous terrain. It takes intentionality to achieve career goals — and that often means applying this same intention to your educational and early-career experiences. This behavior only becomes pathological when career success becomes integral to self-worth and overrides the very convictions that ambition was intended to serve.

This malady transforms the engine of aspiration into the instrument of your own erasure. Past passions are hollowed out into one-liners, and positions are sought solely for the prestige they confer. Containment quickly breaks beyond the confines of employment — swallowing every hour of your day and every corner of your individuality. A careerist mindset violently removes any air for introspection, leaving you with the suffocating absence of an examined self. With this perspective, everything becomes a contest, and your vision is constrained to a black-and-white world — there are only those doing better or worse than you. As careerism progresses, the distinction between who you are and what appears on your resume no longer exists — your titles become your identity.

Despite the severity, careerism is not terminal. Healing does not require the abandonment of ambition, simply the reassertion of intention. To properly orient (or reorient) yourself, you must take a step back and assess your true motivations. Ask yourself why — why do you need that position, title or role? Is the answer rooted in what you believe or in expectations you’ve internalized? Stepping back from careerism requires focus, will and time — but these are steps toward remission.

I write this, having wrestled with careerism myself. I, too, have spent hours fretting over getting the “best” internship, comparing myself to others on LinkedIn and incorrectly treating my resume as an encapsulation of my experience in living. Having spent several months in a hotspot for this behavior, I could no longer ignore how much it had affected me. To turn away is a conscious and difficult choice but a necessary one. Be ambitious. Be proud of what you have accomplished. But tread carefully — the validation of achievement is fleeting.

The metro will still be waiting for me tomorrow morning, much like the careers and accolades that await all of us. The difference lies in whether we step on that train with intention or simply allow the weight of its movement to carry us forward.