The Overachiever

Bethesda native Alexandra Robbins can relate to the Walt Whitman High School students she profiles in her new book, The Overachievers. She’s been there and done that

By Jody Jaffe

It would be so easy to hate Alexandra Robbins:

Four books before age 30, two of which hit the New York Times best-seller list; a new book just out—The Overachievers—about students at her alma mater, Walt Whitman High School; former staffer at the New Yorker magazine; summa cum laude from Yale; featured speaker at both her high school and college graduations.

And then there’s Robbins herself, or as she appears on www.alexandrarobbins.com—a fetching blonde with almost-exotic upturned eyes that look outlined in Sharpee marker. She’s wearing a plunging black sleeveless something, flashing just enough skin sure to lure in those elusive male readers. On her Web site, you can book her for a lecture on any of seven topics ranging from “Marketing to twentysomethings” to “Journalism, writing, and publishing” and learn that she regularly appears on  “60 Minutes,” the “Today” show, “The Early Show,” and the Holy Grail for authors—“Oprah.”

It’s enough to make you want to wish her a bad case of psoriasis. Except…

She doesn’t look much like her picture. I wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t been the only person sitting outside of Caribou Coffee in Bethesda, our assigned meeting place. I expected a tall, glamorous blonde—Cameron Diaz with brains. But Robbins, 30, is a little person—“5’3” on a good day,” she says. Without the full-cosmetic armor and va-va-voom clothes, she’s more tomboy cute than Betty-bombshell. As for the glam part, Robbins, an avowed jock whose idea of a good time is getting muddy on the soccer field, showed up wearing jeans and a blue tank top the first time, then jeans and a Redskins jersey the second. 

Robbins is as humble as a best-selling wunderkind author can be. After her explosion of literary homeruns, written proposals are a thing of the past. Now all she has to do to get a book published is pitch an idea to her agent and editor. If they like it—and they always seem to—it’s a done deal. But that doesn’t stop Robbins from writing the proposal anyway. “Because,” she says, “I’m a perfectionist.”

Which brings us to the final reason why it’s hard to hate her.

Alexandra Robbins has earned it all, every last accolade. She’s worked her tail off to get where she is, proving that life might indeed be fair—or at least for her. She is the poster child for meritocracy. With the exception of being four days late for her arrival on earth, Robbins has been that eager beaver, do-it-not-just-right-but-best girl since the get-go.

When Robbins’ grandfather suggested she write a poem every day for a month about what it’s like to be 8, she wrote 100 of them. When Robbins’ third-grade teacher at Burning Tree Elementary assigned the class to write a one- or two-paragraph short story, little Alex turned in—on time—24 pages complete with illustrations.

“That’s when we knew she had a passion for writing,” says her father, Ira Robbins, a law professor at American University. “When she was in second grade, I went to a parent-teacher conference and I remember asking what we as parents can do to help Alex. She said the best thing you can do is stay out of her way.”

Which they did. By all accounts, Robbins’ parents were the antithesis of some of the parents she writes about in The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. The book tracks a group of Whitman students as they navigate their way through the hyper-competitive college-admission process. Robbins chose most of the kids by sitting in on journalism classes, with the permission of both teacher and principal.

At one point in the book, a mother punches her son in the face—after he’s scored a “double toll-free” on his SATs (two perfect 800 scores) AND had gotten into Harvard—because he wants to go to a lake house with friends instead of staying home to read the Harvard course guide. That was “AP Frank,” so nicknamed because he took 17 AP (Advanced Placement) classes at Whitman. “A typical gung-ho overachiever,” writes Robbins in The Overachievers, “would take perhaps seven.” 

“These students are almost programmed from birth, with helicopter parents hovering over them,” says Ira Robbins.  Not so in the Robbins home. “Our kids followed their passions,” says Robbins’ mother, Jo, a preschool teacher at Concord-St. Andrews Cooperative Nursery School in Bethesda.

Robbins describes her parents as loving and supportive and tells of an idyllic childhood filled with daily family dinners full of laughs and good food; summer vacations at Rehoboth or Ocean City; and family celebrations where the three Robbins kids had friendly competitions of whose homemade card could make their parents laugh the hardest. There was never any pressure, she says, on her or her siblings to earn all As, bloat their high school schedules with AP classes, or get into the right school—though they all did. Robbins is the Yalie, her younger brother and sister graduated from their father’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

 “I was never pushed by them at all,” she says. “It was all internal. I somehow internalized the expectations of society. I don’t know where it comes from and I wish I could have turned it off…I always wanted to be the best. There are always people who are better, but I wanted to live up to the potential that other people seemed to see in me.”

Which she did. After graduating from Yale in 1998, Robbins worked in the Washington bureau of the New Yorker, then became a freelance writer (her work has appeared in many leading national magazines) and in quick succession, wrote five books: Quarterlife Crisis, about 20-something angst; Secrets of the Tomb, about Yale’s secret societies; Pledged, about sorority girls; Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis, more 20-something angst; and The Overachievers. Quarterlife Crisis and Pledged both made the New York Times best-seller list.

Building the résumé

“Audrey could pinpoint the beginning of her perfectionism to the moment. At age 6 Audrey had a homework assignment to decorate a rock as an animal. Other kids spent 45 minutes on the project and were satisfied. Audrey spent all day gluing pipe cleaners and googley eyes to the rock, hysterically crying when she couldn’t get the pink construction-paper nose exactly as she wanted...” – The Overachievers

Robbins never had a rock animal epiphany like “Audrey.” But she does remember when her life, as she knew it, changed by her own volition. “I remember relaxing in eighth grade,” she says. “In ninth, that wasn’t the case anymore. Things started counting then. I started crafting my résumé for college. I felt like Sam (one of the students in The Overachievers)—if I was working so hard I should go to a school that reflects all that work.”

Out, she says, went the violin. “I knew I wasn’t going anywhere with it.” Ditto for Hebrew. She’d already been bat mitzvahed—so what was the point? Those leisurely summer days—gone, too. “In high school, I was using the summer as a time to prepare.”

In came the activities that looked good on a résumé, the ones that show college admissions officers how well-rounded a candidate you are. Student government: She was president of her freshman and sophomore class. Sports: She played field hockey and soccer. Forensics (persuasive oratory):  She won best in Montgomery County and Washington, D.C., with a speech against censorship.

She won’t reveal her SAT scores…exactly. When Robbins was an editorial assistant at the New Yorker she broke the story about President Bush’s unimpressive college grades and SATs. The story got so big that she became part of it. Reporters called to interview her and asked what her scores were.

“I vowed then that I would never tell anybody,” she says.

“Were they over 1400?” I ask.

After writing five books and numerous articles for the country’s best  magazines, Robbins is a skilled interviewer who carefully controls the information flow—in both words and body language. During my interviews, her expression revealed little beyond a pleasant smile or an occasional laugh. Except for three times. Once, when she talked about her mother’s cooking—she puffed up in her chair like an excited sixth-grader with the right answer as she described Mrs. Robbins’ awesome flank steak. Another time, when she talked about the kids she followed at Whitman for The Overachievers and how much they mean to her—I thought she was going to tear up. And finally, when I ask the 1400 question.

A look of hurt, indignation and disbelief flashes across her face before she can rein it in.

“Of course,” she says, then just as quickly rearranges her expression. “I did fine. I didn’t get a perfect score. I got a perfectly fine score.”

Not even she believes that. She laughs and adds, “I cried when I got it (her scores). My parents said I did fine.” But not fine enough for her. She retook the SATs and increased the score by 30 to 50 points.

And then there’s the highly coveted editor in chief job of Whitman’s award-winning (of course) newspaper, the Black & White. It’s the kind of position that college-admission officers pay attention to and the job everyone wants for precisely that reason. “If you stayed a reporter and didn’t advance up to editor,” Robbins says, “you’d be afraid colleges would wonder why you didn’t progress.” She didn’t stay a reporter.

Robbins won the top slot as editor in chief, but it turned out to be a hollow victory. She says she only went after the job because she thought it would look good on her résumé, and throughout her senior year, she wanted to be writing stories, not editing them. She says she doubts that she’d even get the job if she were in high school now.  

“I could never hope to compete against the caliber of kids,” she says. “It’s amped up.”

When Robbins was in high school in the mid-1990s a hard night of studying meant she got to bed as late as 11:30 p.m. or 12 a.m. “Now kids are up till 3 and wake up at 5,” she says.

The drive to take all those AP classes is new, too, she says. “I didn’t have that sense that I needed to take five AP classes, maybe one or two.”

The price of success

Success has come at a price for Robbins. She refuses to say where she lives. She won’t give any details about the renovation of her house. She doesn’t want her parents’ professions disclosed—though they later give approval. And she doesn’t want her husband’s maiden name used. (He took her name when they married because she had an established byline.) He, too, later says it’s OK.

Cagey, yes, she apologizes. But for a reason.  In her book, Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, the front flap copy says, “The sororities’ sordid behavior exceeded her worst expectations—drugs, psychological abuse, racism, extreme promiscuity, violence and rampant eating disorders were just a few of the problems.” That did not please the sisters. After the book came out, Robbins says, she was stalked. No details on that, either.

“I got my first death threat at 16,” she says. She’d done a piece for the Black & White revealing how some Whitman parents were hosting parties for their kids where they let them drink alcohol. “I heard through the grapevine that one of the fathers said, ‘I’m going to kill that bitch.’”

Despite that Robbins looks back fondly on her reporting days at the Black & White. She wrote stories on a variety of subjects: gay students, eating disorders, LSD use at Whitman.  “People were always interested to see what I would write next,” she says.

And though she didn’t especially enjoy her stay as editor, former Whitman journalism teacher Bob Atwood did. “Alexandra Robbins is one of the best student editors I worked with,” he wrote in an e-mail. “She managed a staff of 60 with apparent ease and good judgment. She had a sense of what was right and fair and of interest to readers. I often marveled at how she found time to be a ‘normal’ teenager. Resilient and dedicated, firmness of purpose are words and phrases which come to mind when I think of her. I am proud to be able to say I knew her when.”

Robbins apparently hid her overachieving perfectionism well. Atwood isn’t the only one who thought of her as a normal teenager. Writes Martin Galvin, an award-winning poet and former English teacher at Whitman:

“My memory of Alexandra—and a relatively recent meeting with her—confirms for me that she was challenged to grow intellectually and creatively at [Whitman] and that she met that challenge brilliantly, as did many of her classmates. Her performance was not, then, ‘overachieving,’ but achieving at a level beyond the normal expectations, expectations, by the way, that on the whole and for the nation seem woefully inadequate.”

Robbins took an unconventional and brave writer’s route after college. Instead of getting the expected job as a newspaper reporter, she first freelanced (after a quick and unhappy stay working as an editor of a local newsletter she won’t name). In college, she’d started freelancing for the Washington Post, itself a feat in the hyper-competitive journalism world. Then she was hired as an assistant in the Washington bureau of the New Yorker, where she worked for writer Jane Mayer.

“Alex is terrific, and a lot of fun, and never seemed to me to be overly overachieverish,” Mayer wrote in an e-mail from Vermont, where she was vacationing.  “She had time to baby-sit our daughter, who adored her because they gorged on junk food and acted goofy together. We got to know her husband—and actually went to their wedding—and found them both offbeat and funny and smart and generous, so, really, nothing overly driven. They are both really down to earth. I think the theme they played at the wedding was from “Star Wars”—because they are both nuts for it. And the ‘hot’ guest there was Alex’s grandfather—much beloved—and quite ancient. So, nothing pretentious, just warm people who really enjoyed their families.

 “…Also, Alex was an awesome soccer player, who offered to coach our daughter a little. And, she is very devoted to her younger sister and her parents, with whom she is really close.”

Robbins’ parents won’t use the “O” word, either, when it comes to describing their daughter. “I think of her as a high achiever,” says her mother, “not an overachiever. She worked hard for her goals.”

Which brings us to the NFL and how the league might have had its first female player had not field hockey intervened. “In eighth grade, I wanted to be the first woman player for the NFL,” Robbins says. “I almost tried out for the (Whitman) football team; I walked into the meeting and the coach said, ‘Good, we need a manager,’ and I said, ‘I’m here to play, Coach.’”

But over the summer, she discovered field hockey and opted for that sport because she wanted more playing time. At Yale, she went on to play flag football, soccer and rugby. She also started writing for the Yale Daily News. In a surprising—even to herself—un-overachiever move, Robbins chose sports over journalism when the Yale Daily News editor took her to dinner and told her it was either the paper or the rugby team.

“It was one of the best decisions I’d made,” she says.

By then, she’d already met her future husband, Dave Dashefsky, a Georgetown Day graduate from Potomac. (He became Dave Robbins when they married.) He was the Yale Daily News national editor, who’d read her piece in the News on the plight of Burma. “I saw this long story by Alex Robbins,” says Dave Robbins, a government contracts lawyer and fledgling inventor (he’s got a patent pending on a contraption that turns stiletto heels into a wedge for safer walking). “I didn’t know she was a she. The story was so much more in-depth than you’d expect for a college piece. It was well written, a quick read, it was perfect. I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I would really like him to write for me.’”

Not long afterward at a Yale Daily News happy hour, Dave Robbins “saw a gorgeous blond woman walk in. I was in the middle of a conversation. It’s like I fell out of the conversation, I just stared and stared. I think my friend had to smack me to get me back, ‘Hey! We’re talking here.’”

A few weeks later, they were a couple. “I saw someone who was brilliant, an excellent writer,” he says. “I got to know her work before I knew who she was. It was incredibly seductive to me that I knew her brain, her writing abilities, before I knew she was even a she.”

Dave Robbins’ friends like to joke that he “married up.” He readily agrees with their assessment. Though they’ve been together now for 10 years, he says, “she continually blows me away with her abilities, her drive, her focus.” But mostly, her heart.

“It’s not that she possesses this drive because she wants to be No. 1 in her class or whatever it is, that drive is because she wants to do justice to these kids…She is amazing in all respects. I’d tell you that even if I didn’t think she was going to read this piece. She amazes me on a daily basis… I’m lucky to have her.”

Alex Robbins has always wrestled with her drive to achieve. She remembers when she and a Yale professor disagreed about when she was to take an oral exam, and he gave her a B+ instead of an A. She tried to talk herself down from disappointment.  She remembers thinking, “So you got a B+ and you’re fine with that. It takes all the pressure off.”

She laughs. “And I never got lower than an A after that.”

These days Robbins describes herself as “a recovering overachiever.” She’s off the book-a-year grind and says that she and Dave talk about much more these days than the subjects of her books. They’re even taking impromptu weekend trips, a first for them.

Dave Robbins has no qualms labeling his wife as an overachiever. “She works herself and pushes herself to the limit.” As for the recovering part… well, she’s trying, he says. “She has slowed down a bit, taking more time to hang out and enjoy.”

Right now Robbins is caught up in the publicity swirl for The Overachievers. Though she’s under contract to write another book, she hasn’t started yet.  She hasn’t even picked a topic, or at least she’s not telling. “No more goals,” she says. “I’ll just go where the wind takes me.”

And if you believe that…

Jody Jaffe is the author of the Nattie Gold mystery series and co-author of the novels, Thief of Words and Shenandoah Summer. She teaches journalism at Hollins University and Randolph Macon Woman’s College. Much to her mother’s dismay, she was never an overachiever.