SAT season, school, and prayer that relieves pressure

“Man! I only got a 1450 on my SATs! I have to take them over again!” I heard this type of remark from friends and fellow students all the time in high school. At the time, a 1450 was actually an outstanding result on the SATs because the maximum possible score was 1600 (whereas today the maximum is 2400). The sense of academic pressure, and the feeling that perfect SAT scores were needed to get into the best possible college, was pervasive.

My high school was rated one of the best public schools in the country, and my thinking was challenged more in some of my high school classes than in some college classes I took. Unlike many people, I loved my high school experience, and I will always be grateful for it. But it did have its drawbacks.

Not only were the students I went to school with incredibly bright, but my high school was minutes away from the prestigious Stanford University, and I sometimes felt stuck in a sea of intellectual superiority. My own solid SAT scores, which were good enough to get me accepted into nearly every college I applied to (which, though not Ivy League, were competitive schools), seemed to me to be terrible at the time. I felt a little unworthy when I didn’t sign up for all AP (Advanced Placement) courses my senior year. Intelligence was not just an asset; it was like food. If you didn’t have it, you couldn’t survive.

Competing with other kids over how smart we were was a standard activity. In fact, I sometimes felt guilty for just wanting to have fun every once in awhile! I felt like I had to be the best, and that there must be something wrong with me if occasionally I wanted to innocently goof off like a normal teenager. I can’t say I dealt with it through prayer at the time. Or if I tried, I don’t remember getting anywhere. I’m not sure I even noticed this was a problem.

The pressure I felt to be smart and perfect stayed with me in some ways through college. I became a little determined to be the absolute best, and held myself to this standard. I thought I could achieve it, too, and I became a false optimist, entertaining human ideals that weren’t achievable. I guess you could say it was pride. When I didn’t accomplish all I wanted to, I was naturally upset (and this mind-set was really silly, because I was doing wonderful work in college, but I just didn’t acknowledge it to myself!).

To be honest, I misinterpreted some ideas in Christian Science, too, which only added to the pressure. I thought, “I’m supposed to be God’s perfect child, so I better start being perfect!” I didn’t realize until later on that I already was perfect and beautiful and intelligent in God’s eyes, and that I didn’t need to do anything to acquire these qualities. I already had them. As great as education is, no course or teacher could give me intelligence—as if intelligence was something outside of myself!

Eventually I realized that intelligence wasn’t a quality separate from me. I had always possessed all the intelligence I would ever need, simply because God, divine Mind, gave it to me and to everyone. Once I realized this, I gradually stopped being a perfectionist. I became much more humble about my work. The quality of my work improved, too, and I was more efficient in getting it done. I can say that I expressed the most intelligence when I got myself out of the way and was humbly being inspired by God. That’s when I excelled at the papers I wrote and the projects I worked on—when it wasn’t about my ego, but about the joy of the work itself.

I’ve learned to think of myself as a servant. You may not really like the word servant. But I think about it in terms of serving a very worthy king. In fact, it is serving the King: God. And there is no greater joy than serving God. God gives us work that we are capable of doing, and work that is rewarding. Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “Mind is not necessarily dependent upon educational processes. It possesses of itself all beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them. Spirit, God, is heard when the senses are silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The influence or action of Soul confers a freedom, which explains the phenomena of improvisation and the fervor of untutored lips” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 89 ).

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work hard. We should, and we need to. But work doesn’t have to be a burden. I’m finding that when my work is grounded in inspired prayer, I feel lighter and more carefree than most other times—the burden is actually gone. It’s such a joy to let myself be “the humble servant of the restful Mind” (Science and Health, p. 119 ). I have found it so freeing to remember that the activities of my life are ordered by divine Soul, not by human will. And doing Soul’s work is the most satisfying and rewarding thing I can do.