OVERACHIEVERS WEB SERIES, 2019-2020
Who are Overachievers?
If you’ve ever met an “overachiever” (or you are one), then you know that overachievers share some common characteristics like high standards and strong work ethics. They also probably don’t self-identify as an overachiever; they’re too busy to tell you their story, and they may even be absolutely positive that no one else understands them. You may have watched (or made) some pretty comic over-achievement happen right under your nose.
Overachievers are fun and impressive, but they are often lonely and feel out of sync at times with themselves and others. While there are common characteristics that achievers share, there are also multiple varieties of overachievers. ‘Overachievers’ – the word itself, is not just hard to define but actually weaponized in minority communities where, as one participant pointed out, “You have to overachieve just to be allowed in the room.”
Art We’ve Made
Overachievers Web Series
An inventor, an activist, and a scholar walk into a room …
What would happen if you put a bunch of overachievers in a room together – leaders, inventors, visionaries, the people who get stuff done, across areas of expertise, generations, backgrounds, perspectives – and asked them how do they do that, why do they do that, and what made them that way?
Could you solve world peace? Could you extract the recipe for making everyone into an overachiever? If you also invite the people who love and live with these people, would you find out if overachieving is even a good thing? Could you find out what that word overachieving even means, why that word has so much baggage for marginalized people, and why Western culture equates the fundamental value of people with their amount of achievement?
Based on the stories and words of real ‘overachievers,’ Overachievers Web Series, produced by Wonderlust Productions, explores the complexity behind the compulsion to achieve excessively.
COLLABORATORS
(and members of a community of Overachievers!)