By Maria LaMagna
<[email protected]>

This will not be shocking news, but if you haven’t heard, students here are stressed out.  Swimmers don’t see sunlight during the winter months because they’re at practice so early and stay so late.  During Holiday Spectacular week, students call in “sick” and miss school because they’re exhausted from extensive rehearsals that keep them up late and often unable to finish their homework.  This should never, never happen, and everyone claims that “school comes first.”  How did we get to this point?

I believe it relates strongly to our school’s reputation and expectations.  Collectively, we must be excellent at sports, academics, art, performance and every competition we enter.  This sounds intimidating, but with over 4,000 students we should be able to handle it, right?  Wrong.  Because 4,000 students are not spread out conquering these tasks separately.  A much smaller percentage of the student body is working on these tasks simultaneously, causing the large amounts of stress that they experience. I really don’t think it’s our fault.

We receive so many messages that tell us to spread ourselves thin.  We’ve heard colleges like to see students who are involved in school activities while they maintain a strong report card.  Coaches will stop at nothing until we’re victorious in our sports, and I challenge you to find many coaches at this school who actually think our grades should come first. Our parents even remind us what they balanced at our age.  College Board and selective colleges recommend that we’ve taken four to six AP courses, or at least taken full advantage of what our school offers.  Even the Distinguished Graduate program creates a need to involve ourselves in many different activities in addition to getting top scores and grades.  Whose job is it to tell us when enough is enough?

We’re taking on too much and here’s why: The expectations are unrealistic because this school is not the norm.

Most students who are heavily involved in their schools, and are applying to the same colleges we are, don’t go to schools with 4,000 students.  Call me naïve, but I think when admissions officers gauge the size of our school, they realize it’s not that realistic for us to make two varsity teams while maintaining a 4.0 GPA.  Although some of us do it.  And our parents probably didn’t go to schools this large, so when they say they know exactly what we’re going through, they probably didn’t encounter the same level of competition.

If you want to go to a selective college, grades really do come first.  Take it upon yourself to assure this because your coach or choir director won’t.  They have to win, and you’re just a piece of the overall machine.  It’s no skin off their back if you’re up until 2 a.m. consistently or don’t get into the college of your choice, and for them, there’s always next year.

I don’t believe you have to load your schedule with AP courses, though I’ve done my fair share of it.  Stick to subject areas that actually interest you. When colleges say “take advantage of the AP courses your school offers,” they aren’t expecting that your school offers almost every AP course known to man.  Plus, College Board is a business, a business that charges over $80 per test you take in May.

High schools across the nation are slowly realizing some of these complexes. Scarsdale High School in New York, one of the highest-achieving public schools in the nation, has phased out AP courses completely, allowing them to have their own curriculum and spend time on the subjects they choose to study, and not have to be finished by early May.  Some schools have even instated anti-stress sessions during the school day, with meditation and scheduled relaxation.  Maybe it’s time we took a page out of their books. Maria LaMagna is a perspectives editor for the HiLite. Contact her at [email protected].