<p>"A typical school day for 15-year-old Amanda Rodrigues goes something like this . . . After more than six hours of classes, she has one or a combination of any six after-school activities. Once, she had four club meetings in one day . . ." When did all this craziness start?</p>
<p>Students</a> fight stress in race for college - The Connecticut Post Online</p>
<p>Most people have no idea what we go through. This is an accurate portrayal of many students.</p>
<p>Yeah, and it’s kind of sickening really. At least, to me.</p>
<p>Reading articles like these makes me grateful to be a senior. I don’t think I could deal with another junior year.</p>
<p>Yea I’ve been through all of this. The blood, swaet and tears. I just hope I get into College now.</p>
<p>My parents are mistakenly under the assumption that I - and my peers - don’t do anything at school besides go to class. The level of work that must be completed outside of the classroom while we are at school, be it between periods, at lunch, before or after school, clubs, meetings, discussions with teachers…
I always thought it was just my parents, but after some talks with a few of my teachers I have a suspicion that they don’t even really realize what it is we do and the extent to which we have to work to get it done.</p>
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<p>My classmates and I had this problem when we were students. I think what happens is, the teachers look at the work they give their students for their subject and figure, “hey, I’m sure they can handle this”, without realising that you’ve got to multiply that amount of work by about five or six times when you throw in all the other subjects plus extracurriculars, volunteering commitments and stuff like that - even more if you’re involved in time-intensive activities such as sports or theatre.</p>
<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>I had one teacher who said, “I know that other teachers don’t assign as much as I do. So, I’m going to give you 2.5 hours of work a night, because I have faith in all of you.” And that’s not accurate, because almost all teachers make that assumption. </p>
<p>And let’s say each class gave half an hour of homework a night. During the tennis season, I don’t get home until 7, and it’s usually 8 before I can do homework because of familial dinners and whatnot. With 7 classes, one would be up til 11:30 at night.</p>
<p>Now let’s say you’re a senior, and you have college applications, plus if you are - as the students in the article were - in a leadership position in clubs, you have to plan and arrange activities for those. </p>
<p>School becomes less of a “what can I learn here” situation, and more of a “what is the absolute most efficient way to get this done”, which usually takes the form of doing work in class for another class, lunch-time cram sessions for tests, waking up early for school to get an hour of homework in, etc.</p>
<p>And then weekends come, and our parents are surprised when we don’t want to get a job, or when we don’t want to spend every waking moment doing something. Mine don’t do this, but many of my friends’ parents won’t let them sleep in past 9 on weekends because they want them outside doing something. After we’ve been on overburn for 5 days, we need the weekends to do the leftover work, (like college apps), and to do our best to get a bit of the “high school experience”, whatever that is.</p>
<p>I’m sure this stress is also the source for some drug and alcohol usage among high school students, (I know many for whom it is), but that’s another issue entirely.</p>
<p>ugh. yup seems pretty accurate. I agree that parents don’t seem to get how much work we have, because you’re on overdrive the whole week, and then on the weekend I just want to relax and be somewhat more leisurely but they expect for total action and activity on the weekends too…</p>
<p>One more thing:</p>
<p>Look at the social lives many high school students still manage to keep active. I think the social aspect of high school is a critical part of the “high school experience”, because it is the closest thing to practice for learning how to interact with others one will get before college, and then the job market. </p>
<p>With high school drama, conversations with friends, facebook chat, myspace, and the winner of them all: dating, it is appalling to me that students manage to get through it all. </p>
<p>And, regardless of what many parents would dislike, or try to prohibit, a lot of dating couples in high school are by no means less serious because of academic obligations. For many, it is equally prioritized because, after all, for many dating can also be part of the “high school experience”.</p>
<p>And my parents call me lazy. [:</p>
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<p>I thought the winner of them all was the CC forum! :-)</p>
<p>Pssssh. Only for me. [:</p>
<p>It’s almost an inside joke in my HL Math class.</p>
<p>“So what’d you guys do this weekend in between homework and parental obligatory activities?”
“I saw my girlfriend.”
“Wrote my college app for cornell…”
I pipe in: “College confidential!” And everyone laughs.</p>
<p>I think a CC-intervention was planned once, but I told them it’s good for me.</p>
<p>Pajkaj, you just summarized by high school experience almost perfectly. Well put.</p>
<p>Yeah but who is there to blame and what can be done?</p>
<p>Obviously, if parents and teachers are unaware of all your EC’s and such, then they aren’t the driving force of this intensity.</p>
<p>If you get parents to let up on an hour of chores or teachers to ditch an hour of assigned homework, I think most of these competitive students would fill that hour up with an extra EC or so</p>
<p>And why do we all do this? To maximize our chances of being accepted into our top choice college.</p>
<p>Sleep? High school experience? What are those? (I’m kidding about the first, but totally serious about the second; what the F is “high school experience” supposed to be? Sleeplessness?)</p>
<p>It’s accurate. I know junior year was the worst, myself and many others sacrificed sleep to get everything else done. It’s what it costs sometimes to be involved, but not everything is necessarily for college admission. Grades were for me, but hours upon hours of soccer and running a philosophy club were things I actually enjoyed.</p>
<p>My friend called the lack of sleep a “sacrifice for success later on”.</p>
<p>My life. Period.</p>
<p>I hope people really aren’t doing all that just to get into college. I did stuff because I felt like it. I love sports and music, and I joined clubs that interested me. I wish I could have done more because of the cool things available but I didn’t have enough time, realistically. most nights, the reasons I didn’t sleep included watching my favorite TV shows or getting caught up in books!</p>
<p>faustarp, your approach seems very level-headed and reasonable. The real curse of this elite pressure game is seeing kids do things about which they do not care. The resume rules, rather than their passions. “Getting caught up in books” = One of the best things you can do to spend your time. Well done.</p>
<p>I agree that parents have no idea about what’ve we been through…
but later i thought that their pushing was just for our own good.
well, not all the time…</p>