Competition in Design School - Essay Example

 Therefore, even if some believe that competition is the best way to hone creative skills, it is not without its disadvantages.One disadvantage of competition is that it may cause students to lose sight of their main objective. Educator Mary Pat Lynch shares that in excessive competition, winning becomes the focus, instead of learning. This has been supported by interviews regarding competition conducted by Begins and Cooks in which forty-one academically talented students conveyed that they focused on grade point average as opposed to learning for the sake of knowledge.

No mention was made about any desire for competence by augmenting their knowledge and skills. This means that in a competitive environment, students' center of attention has shifted to the grade, rather than on the main goal of education which is to make students actually understand the ideas being imparted. Among designers, this will cause many to focus on finishing only those ideas that will probably help them win while hardly attempting to bring artistic life to their creations. As such, students compromise the quality of life if they think they always need to perform better than others instead of letting natural talent flow.

The competition also affects the general welfare of a person and society in several undesirable ways. First, competition, by nature, requires only a single or a very small number of people to win while the rest of the competitors will lose. If a person ends up losing most of the time, it could undermine their own self-confidence, foster feelings of weakness, and finally lead to depression. In fact, nearly ten percent of adolescents in the U.S. suffer from depression. Since the height of the depression and low self-esteem in young people often coincide with times characterized by an increase in academic stress, the overly competitive environment increases the probability of poor quality of life for many students.

Unfortunately, depression is a parcel of a cycle that negatively impacts many people. Depressed people are likely to feel left out and become social outcasts because no one will gladly relate themselves with people who see themselves as losers. As they lose their self-esteem, they stop trying to improve themselves. For this reason, they never realize their true talent and rarely contribute anything meaningful to society.