Muscles tensed as soon as she split us into teams. The challenge was to prove who knew the subject matter the best by shouting out our team name. The first to be heard would get to answer. There were shrieks and accusations of cheating. Friendships fell by the wayside, the veracity of answers were queried, feelings were hurt and there was a whiff of hysteria in the air as one student concluded 'someone is going to get slapped.' Except she wasn't a student. She was a 28 year-old marketing executive. And this wasn't a pop quiz in a Latin lesson at high achieving private girls school (believe me when I say those really did get violent, especially when two girls raced each other to the blackboard to circle the correct translation of 'girls, plural'. Have you ever seen a chalk-based battle wound?) This was a hen do I attended earlier this month. And there was no teacher - just our friend Sarah, a TV marketing executive, testing our knowledge of the hen in question. (Incidentally the team names were 'Dennis' and 'Wise' in honour of the hen's teenage obsession. So grown, professional women were screaming ‘Dennis’ at the top of their lungs. It was quite a sight.)
It may sound like this was a particularly tense group of women attending this hen do but I expected nothing less. After all, this friendship group was formed at an over-achieving all girls private school. All these young women have ever known is a pressure to be the best they can possibly be in everything they do - in their careers, their relationships... and in hen games. I should know. I'm one of them. And it's bloody exhausting.
Of course it’s not only girls who attend these types of schools that pile on the pressure to be perfect. Next month, Kings College School, Wimbledon is hosting a conference where experts will discuss how students immersed in this culture of high expectations at these sorts of private schools can be helped to cope. Robert Milne, deputy head master at the school has said that resilience, more often associated with war or poverty, could prove effective in helping children from affluent backgrounds in pressured academic environments. 'People are now starting to look at why these pupils - who have so many things tangibly there for them to succeed - are struggling to cope,' he added. '‘We need to make them understand that it is OK when things go wrong.’
The thing is, will they discuss what it’s like to be a 28 year-old product of such schools? Because I could do with some advice on coping too. The constant need to succeed in all I do has never gone away.
Just last week, my final week on a particular job, I handed in a piece of work that I felt wasn't up to scratch and, as I left the office, I whimpered down the phone to my boyfriend. He tried to reassure me that since I only had one more week left of work for that particular boss and another job lined up, I really didn't need to fret too much over this initial negative feedback. 'But it's the school-girl in me. I can't deal with underachieving,' I wailed back. The next day I went in early to work on it until I was told it was perfect. Only then could I relax.
This determination to achieve is not only manifested in the workplace. One friend from school joined me at an exercise class last year where the instructor decided it would be fun to teach us the Beyonce 'Single Ladies' dance. We could all 'have a go and have a laugh,' as he put it. Well no, actually, we couldn't 'have a laugh' while this joker taught us a highly complicated routine that of course we had no chance of perfecting in the 45 minutes he kept interrupting with chat about his weekend plans. My school pal stormed out in frustration. I was huffing and puffing right behind her... once I had done my best to perfect the routine, of course.
The pressure is relentless. We constantly measure ourselves against our peers, in our personal lives as well as at work. Getting a boyfriend is considered an achievement and an engagement, thanks to the ability to be broadcasted within seconds of the ring slipping on that finger via Facebook, is the new straight A*s for the twentysomething high-achieving female. (Obviously this is a generalisation as not all women want to get engaged but you only have to take a look at my homegirl Megan Jones of University of Tennessee to get what I’m saying.)
I'm in a serious but relatively new relationship at the moment so don't feel any panicked urge to run down the aisle just yet (despite a somewhat stereotypical Jewish mother who texts me pictures of baby clothes when she's bored) but I admit that those mid 20-something years sitting at the singles table were depressing for multiple reasons. It was not just about feeling lonely, it was also about feeling like I'm falling behind while my peers raced through significant life stages. All of a sudden people were moving in together and I was still waiting for some fucker to text me back. I was bottom of the class.
Of course it doesn’t help that girls like us have graduated into a recession, bombarded by social media boasting and evolved into a generation screwed by our grandparents (that sounds wrong but you know what I mean). As 16-year-old Jenni Herd so eloquently put it earlier this week - 'has no one ever seen that we are angry at the world we live in? Angry that we will have to clean up your mess, while you hold us in contempt, analysing our responses as though we were another species?' But really, it doesn’t take a seismic shift in generational expectations to get us going. We will fret forever. It is in our DNA.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to be thick. If not thick, then perhaps unambitious. As treacherous as that sounds to the thousands my parents forked out for my education as well as the betrayal to the Sheryl Sandberg sisterhood, it just looks like a much more relaxing way to live. I'm not alone in my view. Last week American University Professor Rosa Brooks caused controversy by breaking the taboo and saying that her obsession with 'Leaning In' was making her miserable. She's got a point: if I was dumb and unmotivated, would I have to fight back the angst and frustration every time my editor commissions another young female journalist to write a piece over me? Er no, I wouldn’t give a flying... but then I very much doubt I would be working at a national newspaper either.
The truth is my schooling was the making of me. Yes I am prisoner to the intense pressure I put on myself and I don't take too well to underachieving (understatement of the year) but that is what makes me constantly strive to do better. Perhaps as I grow older and become more comfortable in my life, I will ease up on myself but I never want to take the foot off the pedal completely. I want to keep going. No matter how knackered I get. It’s the only way I know how to be.
Follow Abigail on Twitter @abigailradnor
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.