“I never should have dropped. I can’t believe you let me do that,” I said. This was minute 10 of me walking around the patio in distress, whisper-yelling to my parents on the phone. In hindsight, me dropping out of my computer science class was not their doing. But it always feels a little easier to blame someone else for my “mistakes.”
My mom reassured me that it was a good decision and that if I was no longer pursuing a degree in cognitive science on the computer science track, I was essentially putting myself through EECS hell for elective credit. There was no logical response on my end of the phone call, merely a blabbering of reasons why my parents shouldn’t encourage me to quit hard things. But, all faux-blame aside, I was the one who pressed the withdraw button after seven weeks, countless failed tutoring sessions and a handful of code-induced meltdowns.
Quitting is taboo in today’s world, especially in the setting of high academia. I proudly transferred to the University of Michigan, and I still recall my friend assuring me that leaving my old university doesn’t make me a failure. For me, that was never even a consideration. If anything, transferring to a highly-regarded institution made me a successful student.
There are, however, a sizable smattering of things that I have felt shameful about quitting, EECS included. In my experience, quitting has generally been frowned upon. For instance, my sister quitting everything she tried throughout middle school always used to be the butt of the joke at family gatherings, and understandably so. When she quit something, it was after minimal effort, and her alternative was doing nothing in her room. If it wasn’t dance, it was piano, and if it wasn’t piano, it was all of the sports and activities to ever exist. I’m telling you, this girl liked nothing. This rare scenario is when I view quitting as something that indicates a deeper, underlying issue.
However, for most people (including the adult version of my sister), the alternative to doing something isn’t doing nothing. So then why is there still shame around quitting? I quit EECS to do something more desired and useful with my time. Now, my biopsychology, cognition and neuroscience major leaves my days EECS-free with the same job prospects as cognitive science. But there is still something embarrassing about saying that I dropped a class seven weeks in after giving it my all. Could that “something embarrassing” be the admission of failure?
There are a few reasons why quitting is taboo, one of them being mere connotation. The denotation of the word “quit” is to give up and implies a lack of effort. In a productivity-centered society, a lack of effort, especially in a work-setting, is wildly frowned upon. This is potentially due to the idea of capitalistic productivity, which suggests that in order to professionally advance and earn money, we must act as work machines who prioritize our jobs over everything. In this sense, as college students we all have an internalized pressure to work and be productive, perhaps subconsciously. Quitting or giving up does not seem to go hand-in-hand with productivity.
However, quitting is sometimes the most productive thing you can do. The sunk cost fallacy is the idea that you can’t stop now because of all the time and resources you have already invested into the commitment. This fallacy rests on four factors, all of which can also explain my hesitancy to quit EECS (and your hesitancy to drop the club you attend once a week but can’t stand).
The first factor of the sunk cost fallacy is loss aversion: the desire to avoid loss over all else, even over gaining something equally valuable. The most extreme example of this is hoarding — the loss would be throwing away all of the junk, while the gain would be a clean, organized space.
The second factor is commitment bias, which argues that people tend to remain loyal to past behaviors or decisions, particularly to those that were publicly stated. If someone publicly commits to The Ohio State University, for example, and then gets off the waitlist at the University of Michigan, it might be the more logical decision to come to the University of Michigan. But, according to commitment bias, this student may feel pressured to stick to their original plan and thus will make the wrong decision.
The third factor is waste avoidance. People don’t want to quit because they don’t want to waste the resources — money, time, energy — they have already invested. This factor was certainly my largest consideration when I dropped my class and is likely the concern of many college students. Thinking about all of the countless nights I spent coding when I could have been doing work I enjoyed almost made me suffer through the second seven weeks of the class.
Last but not least, factor four is emotional bias. This factor argues that emotional attachment makes us want to stay committed, even if we don’t enjoy the commitment. This one is most prevalent in relationships and even life-long sports.
It’s dangerously easy to get sucked into the sunk cost fallacy, hence the name. Psychological phenomena like this are highly influential, but there are ways to eliminate unwanted influences, even the ones that come from your own brain. Being aware of the sunk cost fallacy is the most effective way to outsmart your mind in these scenarios wherein you are desperate to end a commitment. If you know what it means and what it can do to you, you have the power to avoid the fallacy’s spell and reframe your thought process surrounding quitting your various commitments.
Quit, even if it’s to do nothing instead. I quit countless things throughout my high school and college career, and I couldn’t be happier with the path I’m currently on. I quit my first university to attend the University of Michigan. I quit my sorority because I didn’t like the social scene and wanted to spend my time in other ways. I mentally quit my intended economics major, political science major and creative writing major. I love what I do now and how I spend my time — clubs, classes, friends and all. And I wouldn’t have found these passions and people had I not quit what was wrong for me.
Of course, all of my advice depends on having a fairly strong sense of self. Quitting may bode poorly for someone who is wishy-washy about everything they do. But I’ve always been someone whose interests often turn into passions. So, although sometimes it’s exceptionally difficult, I try to remind myself of the benefits of quitting, and not let the sunk cost fallacy stand in my way.
Talia Belowich is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at taliabel@umich.edu.