<p>At my school there is an inordinant amount of stress about getting into college.
a teacher asked me to join a "stress commitee" about targeting the key sources of stress and trying to find some type of a solution (i recommend this, by the way, if your school has similar issues). we had a meeting the other day just to talk about stress and where it comes from, and why. something that another english teacher said really stuck out:</p>
<p>in the honors english class (the highest level at our school, since the english dept. rebelled against APs and english is already extremely difficult anyway), people were given a paper assignment to write about a catch-22 they'd experienced in their own lives. <em>15</em> people wrote about being in honors english when they didnt enjoy it, just to get into college: the catch-22 was that they were miserable in the english class because they had no passion for it, but they'd be miserable if they didn't take it, because they would feel like underachievers that would not get into a "good" college. they cited multiple sources of stress, and how it affects them. one kid said, </p>
<p>"i take all honors courses for my mother, i play sports for my father, and i'm applying to college for my grandfather (because he wants me to go to his alma mater)."</p>
<p>what is happening to us?
why can't we just enjoy our lives?</p>
<p>It makes me sad too. Especially the hypocrisy of some teachers, who try to console us about stress, and then assign 5 hours of HW on the same day.</p>
<p>Hey, I'm a parent, and I'm with you. My daughter, a senior, took all adv/honors classes throughout her four years; took H Geometry as Fresh., H AlgII as a soph and went on from there, never having taken alegebra at all--and she hates math. What did I say about this? "Why?" She's crazy--she put the pressure on herself for reasons that are her own, though I'm sure it must have something to do with how she was raised, though I can't fathom it. I think AP classes are an absurd idea--she only took APUSH, tried to get into APLIT but was denied and ended up loving her honors world lit class best of all the classes she took throughout her entire 4 years. Go figure. I think most of the pressure she puts on herself is generated by her own competetiveness with her peers (and actually by her sense of feeling less up against some students that she personally doesn't like all that much). People act out their inner struggles in different ways--take a look around, the world is full of them, people that is. Anyway, in highschool I never drove myself this way, but I had my own problems with their own stress quotients. It's pretty hard to escape if your a thinking being, unless you turn yourself into one of those invasion-of- the-body-snatcher people who just "go with the flow" all the way to oblivion. Good luck, and when you finally do get to that college that lies at the end of stress avenue, just make sure you're there because YOU want to be there.</p>