If at first you don’t succeed, quit

My high school had no real music society, so unfortunately I never got the chance to sing. During frosh week my freshman year, I vividly remember sitting in a packed hall listening to different a cappella groups sing and impress. I was mesmerized. I auditioned. I failed. Not because of a lack of effort, but because I really just didn’t know how to sing. Never mind, Ali, move on. Fair enough.

My high school also had no real campus publication (other than an end-of-year magazine), so I never got the chance to write about campus issues. The ‘Prince’, I discovered through a friend, had an opinion section. That seemed optimal, and this time, I thought, I even had the talent! I applied to be a columnist. I was rejected.

So then I regrettably crawled toward debate. Quick disclaimer: as a former member, debate is a great activity in intellectual thought and public discourse, and Princeton’s debate society is a well-run, high-performing club. But I had promised myself that, after five years of spending fifteen hours a week on debate in high school, I would never debate in college; that I would try new and different things. But there I was, at the first practice, sometime in October of my freshman fall. I tried and I strived for a little bit, but eventually I quit that too.

For me, there was no value in debating again for another four years, beyond another line or two on a resume or some recognition from my peers. Those things can and do have worth. However, in my case, it was offset by the desire to try something new, to never think in terms of “Government” and “Opposition” ever again or to subject myself to the whims of sleep-deprived, biased judges. To find myself, I could not do four more years of the same.

Ever since then, I’ve joined and quit many societies and clubs. Of course, each time I quit, I try to finish the work I’ve committed to doing, leaving with some sort of a clean bill. But once I join a club and realize that for whatever reason I don’t want to continue, I have continually found myself cleaning up my work and moving on to the next thing. The process has been priceless in teaching me which clubs actually matter. After three years, I have finally ‘channeled’ my efforts into two or three extracurricular activities that I am really passionate about, instead of six or seven that only slightly pique my interests. The catch, though, with quitting is knowing why.

Despite my track record, I’m not at all advocating excessive quitting. In a lot of ways, quitting makes no sense. Let’s look at three of them. First, a college experience is about balance: there will always be things you will not enjoy doing, but you still ought or have to do them (think MAT 201: Multivariable Calculus or PHY 103: General Physics I for engineers). The trick is to balance these relatively unsavory aspects of a course load with more enjoyable courses or extracurricular activities.

Second, there are some commitments you just can’t quit, requirements that need to be completed to reach a certain goal or end. I obviously would be far more reluctant to drop ECO 302: Econometrics (a core class for my major) than, say, an elective or a course I took just because it seemed enjoyable. In these cases, it seems, the reasons to stick around outweigh the current inconveniences that tempt me to quit.

Third, there is an internal benefit we gain from not quitting. The very act of perseverance, even in the face of persistently annoying and difficult tasks, is precious. Learning to persevere in life equips us with tenacity and resolve, which help make us stronger in the face of future adversities that pose similar, or even more difficult, problems.

But despite the value of staying true to our commitments, not quitting — as a steadfast rule — does not make sense either. There are benefits to giving up, too. At a competitive campus like ours, however, I often find that everyone neglects them. We often equate quitting with failure. This is not only inaccurate, in that many people have various reasons for dropping a course or leaving a sport or changing a major, but also adds even more peer pressure to an already stressful campus dynamic. A lot of times, people stick with things they don’t want to stick with or don’t get much benefit, material or personal, from sticking with a group. I have often found that despite the lack of enjoyment with their situations, many overlook this discontent with the fact that they occupy positions in clubs that are exclusive and hard to get into.

My point is this: there is already so much academic and pre-professional pressure against quitting that we don’t need to add social pressure. As long as people realize that, according to their own ends and goals, quitting x, y and/or z is desirable, they should do it. As Tyler Blackmon, a senior at Yale, writesin an article for the Yale Daily News,quitting a particularly stressful course can make college, as a whole, much more worthwhile (I definitely recommend reading his piece because he does a much better job at explaining the wonderful world of giving up than I ever could).

For me, personally, quitting has worked wonders in fine-tuning my interests. For somebody else, it could help ease a stressful schedule; for another student, it could allow him or her to focus more on classes or employment efforts, leading to better performance. Quitting isn’t failing, but maybe failing to know why you quit is.

Ali Akram Hayat is an economic major from Lahore, Pakistan. He can be reached at ahayat@princeton.edu.