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Conquering Academic Validation—Effective Practices for your Professional (and Personal) Future!
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By Maya W on November 26, 2025
For many high-achieving students, academic validation is a strong motivator for keeping up with classwork and finding a sense of purpose in daily life. However, when grades are the sole priority of your time as a student, there can be downsides for your personal wellbeing, social life and even educational pathway. In this article, I focus on the downsides of excessively emphasizing academic validation, and provide healthy alternatives to improve your personal and professional future.
Extracurricular and Social Activities
Taking part in extracurricular activities is a great way to build your identity outside of schoolwork. You not only have the opportunity to explore new interests, but you also develop character outside of the classroom. Over time, you can develop new hobbies, passions and a better understanding of yourself separate from being a student. That way, the next time you score low on an assignment or struggle in school, your sense of self worth is not entirely tied to your academic performance.
By engaging in extracurriculars, you can socialize with peers in communities that are organically created. Student-led organizations and volunteer work often bring people together around a specific topic, ranging from hobby-related interests like knitting to affinity-based groups that center a particular identity. Broader extracurricular activities, such as sports, gather people from a diverse array of backgrounds, and create a positive environment by centering collaboration and meaningful interpersonal interactions. In all, extracurricular activities are a great way to build a network of social support from communities of your interest. Overly emphasizing academics can limit your time to socialize throughout the year, so making space for interpersonal interaction is a great way to balance classwork with personal wellbeing.
Career and Educational Development
Excessively prioritizing academic validation can not only prove detrimental to your personal wellbeing, but it often limits the career or educational pathway you pursue. In the United States, colleges typically utilize an approach that emphasizes grades and standardized testing scores in addition to measures of personal character, often through college essays and extracurriculars. Students who perform well academically but cannot demonstrate they are well-rounded individuals may struggle to stand out amongst a crowd of similarly high-performing applicants.
Additionally, as you progress throughout your academic pathway, you may find a growing need to advance your aspirations for the future outside of classwork. If you exclusively focus on scoring well in schoolwork in the hopes of furthering your education or career, you may miss out on other important aspects of professional growth. For instance, as a political science major in college, I have started working towards the possibility of a career in the field through networking, internships and relevant extracurriculars. Academics are one way to aspire towards your future career, but, depending on your areas of interest, effort in classwork may be best accompanied with industry-specific focus.
Academic Validation and Your Future
Most of these tips are derived from my lived experiences with academic validation, and may not fully translate over to your life circumstances. Students navigating different educational systems, personal experiences with the classroom or unique areas of interest may find academic validation to be a useful tool for their personal goals. Even so, I hope these tips have provided you with some insights to consider adapting for your own life, whether it be in a career, social settings or your aspirations within and outside of the classroom.
Thank you to Milo D. for editing this article!
