Perfectionism is a wily demon. And it stalks the language learning community with a particularly bloodthirsty enthusiasm.
Halloween seems the perfect time to address this perfidious little monster lurking in our midst. For while it can tempt us to embrace it, driving us towards mastery (mainly through fear), it can make us very inflexible, too.
Perfectionism is an extension of a need for control. Control, in fact, is so integral to the perfectionist’s outlook, that it features as a defining characteristic for perfectionists as far back at Cattell’s famed personality questionnaire. As such, perfectionists find it really threatening when unpredictable outside variables are added to the mix.
And the most unpredictable? Other people.
The Perfectionism Challenge
Imagine my butterflies, then, when I, a self-confessed and chronic perfectionist, learned that I had to work with someone else on an academic assessment recently. The horror, the horror. And just as I cynically predicted, my random partner wasn’t a carbon copy of me. Different priorities, different attitudes, different approach… Wringing my hands in despair, I cast a glance to the sky a let out a shrill whyyyyyyyyy?
Early signs set off all of my alarms. I contacted my partner ten days in advance of the deadline; my partner preferred to leave it until the deadline was upon us. I wanted to break the task into chunks and work out a plan; my partner preferred a more organic, on-the-spot approach. This did not bode well, I thought.
You know what, though? It somehow came together.
The fact that we ended up with something coherent and submissible made me question my own stress and hyper-focus leading up to the task. There was something even a bit – dare I say it – more human about the result, which it might have lacked if it had been robotically perfect. Could it be that I might sometimes take things too seriously for my own good?
Perish the thought!
Bursting Bubbles
We do need our bubbles bursting once in a while. Being closed off to outside influence isn’t a good recipe for personal growth. And grow, we did: we grafted together a piece of work that was unique, rather than a continuation of the same old theme.
The end product demonstrated more than just an ability to memorise and regurgitate foreign language material. It showed an ability to communicate, in all its messy glory. After all, by its nature, language learning is about communicating with others. It could be just what the doctor ordered to get a dose of good old chaos now and again.
It’s no surprise that perfectionism and learner independence go hand in hand. But leave a door open to the rest of the world, too.
