The Exeter Bubble
By ALEX LIM ‘27
As Exonians, our minds are often crammed full of stressful thoughts. It’s like no matter how hard you try, as you lie in bed at night, all you can think of is that test you bombed, the project you have due, or the 30 pages of reading you still haven’t done. These thoughts are what cause the tinge of guilt you feel when you hang out with your friends, when you think to yourself, “I should be studying right now.” But are our grades really that important?
Living in an environment surrounded by high-achieving students often leaves us feeling as though we need to constantly catch up to them. If we aren’t working as hard as our peers, then we’re not working hard enough at all. At Exeter, it is common to work yourself to the point of burnout, and get caught up in the obsession of academic success. I think everyone has heard at least one friend complain that one bad test grade determines their final grade, which determines their GPA, which determines the college they go to. And eventually, the conclusion is made that one bad grade is what will determine their future. And if every test is as important as their future, then every test will probably consume their daily thoughts.
This kind of academic stress, no matter how severe, has eventually created what is called “The Exeter Bubble.” This bubble has caused students to neglect many things that are happening outside of campus, making us often forget about the world that exists beyond our grades. Since we’re constantly thinking of the next project, test, or assignment, we are not left with much time to consider non-academic problems.
Although I believe that the Exeter Bubble should be something that we strive to break down, it’s not automatically solved by just saying, “There’s people dying,” to anyone who’s caught up in their grades. If someone feels stressed about their grades, invalidating their problems won’t help at all, especially if you do it in a way that makes them feel like they’re, “just being dramatic.”
The issue with this approach is that it compares the importance of the issue of grades with the importance of literally any other issue. This approach makes the importance of problems very quantitative. This makes the solution far too complicated, because measuring the importance of a problem requires considering impact, perspective, time, et cetera. Different problems will hold different importance for different people in different scenarios, which is why comparing problems is not the best way to break the Exeter Bubble, even though this approach is so common.
For grades and external issues, I believe that it’s not about trying to care about everything equally. But it’s also not about caring the “right” amount. Rather, it’s more about making sure that you don’t care entirely about one thing, and making sure you view problems from many different aspects. By viewing the issue of grades through the lens of someone who considers a single test as a reflection of their future, you lose the headspace to care about things unrelated to school. However, if you view grades through the lens of someone who believes thinking of grades is “dramatic,” you lose the opportunity to learn from your past mistakes or bad grades.
So when you’re feeling caught up in your academics, make sure to take a step back and think: am I thinking about this because it is important to me, or am I allowing this thought to consume me? Take control of your thoughts, because when you change your thoughts, you change your world.