Throughout students’ entire educational career, surrounding adults, whether it be teachers or parents, are pushing them to the next step. Past elementary school, some students respond well to the pressure placed on them by adults to pursue everything that will set them up for a bright future. Getting good grades, joining clubs and sports, maintaining a high GPA, and connecting with the community can feel overwhelming for students. Many teens struggle with the pressure to be their best and to stand out in a sea of other teens.
Throughout my entire school experience, I’ve been under the impression that the ACT is the make or break moment. Teachers talk to me as if this test is the only determining factor for whether or not I make it into my dream college. For some teachers I recognize that it’s not intentional, but it’s felt by students anyways. Carrying that weight as I walked into the testing room, taking my seat while my instructors began spewing a never ending list of things that will award me an automatic zero, and finally starting the exam, I tried to do my best all while believing that this test determines my future.
Unfortunately, the ACT pressure isn’t even where the college stress ends. Imagine you get your ACT score back and you scored a 31. You have a vast array of colleges that you could easily get accepted into with a score that good, but then you come to a shattering halt: tuition.
Your family can’t afford half of the schools that have the most prestigious programs for your major. Scholarships can only get you so far even with good grades and test scores. In no world should getting a good education cost up to $50,000 per year. The stress put on high schoolers to get the most scholarships possible by keeping straight A’s, joining clubs they’re not even interested in, and burning themselves out working after school and on weekends, only weakens their mental and physical health. Students can see this as a necessary part of life because of the way it is spoken about by adults, but that’s simply untrue. There are an infinite number of paths that can lead students to a successful career and it’s important that adults effectively convey that to teenagers.
Not only do students feel this pressure at school, but even our entertainment and social culture is built on grounds of pushed academic success. If you look at some of our generation’s beloved TV shows (“Gilmore Girls”, “Pretty Little Liars”, and “Gossip Girl” to name a few) you’ll notice a pattern.
Throughout each of these shows and others like them, college is one of the main focuses for the characters. In “Pretty Little Liars”, Spencer Hastings is the personification of academic stress. Growing up in a successful and powerful family, pressure was put on her to excel academically and make it to a prestigious university. She pushed herself to the point of taking stimulants in order to stay up and study all night. When you break it down and look past the added boy drama, “Gilmore Girls” boils down to a girl who is overly obsessed with her dream college. And while “Gossip Girl” is centered around a friend group of rich high schoolers, one of the side plots is the characters attempting to get into the colleges that they deem respectable enough. When Blair Waldorf wasn’t admitted into Yale she threw a tantrum. She complained about having to go to NYU and eventually Colombia instead.
It’s blatantly obvious that these shows are all targeted towards teenagers with the high school drama and school scene. It’s meant to portray real issues that teens have because it’s human nature to like things that we can relate to. This explains why writers include these plot ideas into shows for teenagers. It perfectly depicts the mental war of trying not to disappoint your family, teachers, and yourself academically.
The way children are educated regarding college needs to change. The health of students, whether it be mentally or physically, should be adults’ number one priority. Students are told that stress harms the body while simultaneously being weighed down by the ideology that college is the end all be all. It’s important to express to students that college is simply one path out of a million that can lead to a successful and fulfilling life. College is not for everyone and while administrators may say that, they have to do a better job at convincing students and easing that tension. Making small changes in the way we approach these conversations across the country will lead to students developing a healthier mindset, body, and soul while also helping to create a happier adolescent experience.