The beginning of December marks the release of the year’s Spotify Wrapped playlist. That day has become a yearly social event, during which my friends and I share our top songs and artists and see who listened to the most music during the year. Personally, it’s a fun way to look back at the music I’ve been listening to--and realize that I listened to ‘The Other Side of Paradise” way more than I had thought.

This year, Spotify added a new feature to mark the end of the 2010s--the decade, “wrapped”. Over the past three years, I’ve listened to a lot of music. I’ve changed music tastes. I’ve discovered a whole lot of new artists. More importantly, this has been in time with my personal growth through the years. And so I decided to use this editorial, in the last Cuspidor issue of the 2010s(!!!), to wrap up the decade, as it were.

Even though I won’t turn eighteen until halfway through the coming year, I’ll still consider this decade the one during which I came of age. From ages seven to seventeen, the 2010s were the decade I started to reflect on my own identity. It’s been a decade of learning: going from learning long division in second-grade math to differentiation in calculus, from “Bonjour, comment ça va?” to reading full novels in French. I also learned how to use the Internet, and during this decade browsing speeds have gone from so slow we had to wait entire minutes for pages to load, to lightning-quick--now, I’ll complain if anything takes more than a few seconds to process.

Crucially, I began to use the Internet on my own, an occurrence I’ll date around 2014. This is what I’ll credit with the development of my identity as it stands today. Hours watching YouTube videos, reading pirated ebooks, and browsing through Spotify might not seem like time well-spent, but these first forays into the online world allowed me to learn about what was going on in the world beyond my home and school, both politically and culturally. Furthermore, the endless rabbit hole of Wikipedia satiated my curiosity. It was during this time, these seemingly empty hours, that I developed taste. Bad taste, some might say. But taste all the same.

The interests I developed, in large part online, became the constituent parts of my personal identity. The time I’ve spent thinking about who I am and want to be, over the past few years, has been important in shaping my outlook on life and my goals for the future. During the process of applying for university, this has been extremely useful (under the category of my “passions”, in the words of S5 Guidance class). Even the crises (so to speak) that I went through to figure out what the heck I wanted to stand for served their purpose. Looking back, the 2010s were good.

Looking to the future, however, reveals a starkly different picture. My classmates and I may be gearing up for university and adulthood, but looming in the future are also the threats of an unstable political climate, as well as, literally, an unstable climate.

I’m sure the youth of every generation feel discontented with the world’s status quo, and likewise imagine themselves the worst off. However, it’s hard not to feel a sense of dread and urgency with the threat of the destruction of human civilization in its entirety before the end of our lifetimes. It’s hard, too, to not feel downright scared when faced with the inaction of many world leaders on this issue. It’s hard to imagine a zeitgeist worse than climate change.

At the same time, though, enormous strides have been made in 2019 alone to combat this issue. There is hope, as long as we all do our part.

Ten years from now, at the end of the next decade, the current S6s will be turning 27, and the F1s, 22. “Spotify Wrapped”--and all the apps of today (*cough* TikTok)--will likely be passé. There’s no way to know what the future will hold, but here’s to all of us looking back on the 2020s, and being able to smile.

Lying in bed, you think about the countless things that you must get done by tonight. Your mind drifts to that English essay, that statistics test or that university supplementary application. A wave of anxiety usurps you; you can’t seem to clear your mind. Even during the rare times where you don’t have much work, you still cannot be free from those thoughts. You need to be productive every second, every minute, and every hour.

Feeling guilty for being “unproductive” is not uncommon. What flourishes alongside our desire for productivity is guilt. Like many others, I like being “productive”. Accomplishing work projects, getting recognized for diligence, or completing something mundane like cleaning my room brings me feelings of inner satisfaction. I often struggle with feelings of guilt whenever I have spare time because there is always something that I could be doing or something that I could improve myself. But I wonder if our society puts too much emphasis and pressure on being productive. When we get to the point where we beat ourselves up if we don’t cross every item off our to-do list, it might be time to reassess and re-evaluate the question behind these tasks. Why must we complete these tasks? Why is it so significant that we must sacrifice sleep, health and happiness? I came to realize that it is important to take the time to recognize our values behind our checklists. It is essential to move past the mistake of associating unproductiveness with our own self-worth.

Firstly, we need to realize that we are all imperfect; no one does everything perfectly all the time. It is crucial to also realize that perfection should not be the #1 desire. Taking everything to its logical extreme or conclusion often is unhealthy. It means that moving in the direction from where you are now, will produce its own benefits as by-products.

Second, we must move beyond comparing and competing. There are too many expectations and if we try to live up to everything, we will inevitably feel trapped. The real source of the productivity guilt is perhaps derived from the gap between how we view ourselves and how we would like to be. We don’t always have infinite discipline, time, freedom, resources and intelligence. We always start as flawed people, trying to make things a little better one step at a time. We should not feel guilty for not reaching someone else’s standards.

Finally, trying to improve ourselves is a good thing, however, too much guilt does not help us achieve that. Guilt does motivate, but it does so at high costs. We must pick and prioritize a few goals to work on and tell ourselves that it is okay to let go of other things. If we focus on what truly matters to us, we should begin to feel less guilty about everything else. Aim to be slow and patient; you will get most of the results with lot less of the anxiety.

It took me awhile to steer myself away from the idea that I need to earn the relaxation. It is so easy to get caught up thinking that I need to complete everything perfectly before I can finally relax and have fun. The best way to make progress is to start from where you are and in order to initiate that, you must accept your current state. There is growth that comes from relaxation and taking a break. You need to recharge and rejuvenate before you can fully be productive.

Across the table, your interviewer takes notes casually, their pen gliding across the page. Your hands begin to grow clammy, eyes flickering across the room, trying to pinpoint the best spot to look. Do you make eye contact? Do you look at the clock? No, don’t look at the clock, they’ll think you want to leave, or that you don’t want to be here. The interviewer seems to be almost finished writing. Frantically you think back to every anecdote that you’ve heard, every interview prompt that you’ve stayed up reading. You’re prepared for this, for nearly whatever comes next. There’s just one thing you hope they don’t ask you.

In your own opinion, what would you say your greatest weakness is? It’s a loaded question and one that has become so commonly used in the interview process that it’s hard not to roll your eyes before giving a response. In theory, it’s possible that the query has the potential to be useful in determining which applicants should be accepted and rejected. For the interviewer its a chance to see how candidates perform under pressure when a curveball is thrown at them and rather than listing off all of their achievements they must admit to their own shortcomings. For the interviewee, it seems to be a chance for them to turn their so-called negatives into positives. To convey to their potential employer that what some would consider their greatest weakness is actually their biggest asset. A skilled candidate will turn the question around, rather than having to point out a chink in their armour they have more airtime to boost themselves up. At this point, the question should be rephrased to say “what is something that you searched up on the internet that is ‘negative’ but can easily be spun to appear positive?

The inquiry has become so common in society that a series of stock answers have arisen. Was it answered truthfully, the response it posed would be insightful, allowing for a deep understanding of the character of a potential employee, more so than asking what responsibilities they took on at their previous job. But the reality is that a question meant to keep people on their toes has become so expected that its response becomes edited and polished, the delivery rehearsed and prepared to perfection that it might as well be tied up with a little bow. Rather than being honest with ourselves, we choose to pick from a list of adjectives that make us sound most appealing. Somewhere in trying to appear desirable, we lose our sense of authenticity, and our ability to become self-aware dwindles.

This inability to recognize our own weaknesses goes beyond a simple interview question. Our stock answers have cultivated a culture of being unable to be honest with ourselves. Now, it is not a clichéd query that serves as the root of societies incapacity for introspection, but rather a real-life example of the ramifications of the superficiality that arises in our attempts to appear flawless. It’s not that we don’t believe that we are without fault, in fact for many of us we can drive ourselves mad thinking about every little thing that is less than perfect about us. The problem is, that to the outside world we try to appear fine, to seem like our weaknesses do not affect us to such a great extent, and in doing so we often fail to fully acknowledge what our flaws truly are.

While it is not wise to focus solely on our own shortcomings, to psychoanalyze ourselves to the point of insanity, or yell out the window what our deepest inadequacies are for all to hear, it also is not wise to refuse to accept them as bona fide, to lock them up inside of you and throw away the key.

The problem is, if we do not acknowledge our weaknesses how are we ever supposed to learn what our strengths are? If we do not acknowledge where we fall short how are we supposed to work towards ensuring that these flaws do not hinder our existence any more than they already have? Admitting you are flawed is not the same as believing yourself to be inadequate. Rather, it humanizes you. There is not a single person in this school, or in the world that is without flaws. There is no one that does not have a greatest weakness.

The presence of our faults leaves us with two options. We can allow them to consume us, to both deny their existence while still knowing that they are an inalienable part of our being, or we can learn from them. By knowing what our shortcomings are we can work towards eliminating these faults from our being, or at the very least try to work towards ensuring they don’t impact us to the extent that they have in the past. But in order to do that, we have to be honest with ourselves. Ignoring a problem won’t make it go away, and denying the existence of your own shortcomings won’t make them any less a part of you. Rather than vilifying the entire concept of weaknesses, it’s time to acknowledge them. To admit, whether it’s to the person on the other side of the desk, or even just to yourself what your flaws are. It’s time to realize that having a weakness is not the same as being weak, and conceding that you have a fault does not mean that it cancels out all of the exceptional qualities that you possess. One small imperfection does not make you inferior.

Finally, the interviewer looks up from their paper, finished writing whatever it was they thought about your previous answer. You shift a little in your chair, swallowing expectantly. But then your shoulders relax a little, the lump in your throat that has been there the entire morning begins to fade. A stream of positive thoughts enters your consciousness. You are not inadequate, you can do this.

The interviewer smiles at you a little, before clearing their throat.

“In your own opinion, what would you say is your greatest weakness?”