The perfectionism trap

By Josh Cohen

As a young university lecturer two decades ago, I taught a course on 19th-century American literature. Though I loved the period, my students were less enamoured. Most would give up on “Moby-Dick” or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Essays” after only a few pages, then sit in seminars coiled in silence, hoping that I wouldn’t call on them.

Roy was different. He was prodigiously well-read and discussed our texts with passionate intensity, which his classmates observed with a mixture of perplexity and awe. At the end of term, most students handed in efficient and entirely unremarkable essays. But Roy came to my office two days before the deadline begging for an extension.