Discuss “CMU's culture of competitive complaining belittles us all”

I’m told it happens at every top-tier school; my friend at Harvard calls it “the suffering game.” I call it I-got-less-sleep-than-you-did. It’s a conversation we’ve all overheard (and maybe participated in once or twice): two students from different majors holding a spirited debate over whose life is more difficult. From outside, it’s laughable and pathetic, but from within, it’s life-or-death. Suddenly someone has questioned your right to be here, your right to respect yourself as an intellectual.

But if Albert Einstein, Gustave Flaubert, and Sir Laurence Olivier ever found themselves sitting around the same dinner table, I think the last thing they’d do is get into a pissing contest.

Why do we do it? Why must we incessantly...