School is prison.
Maybe that’s an overstatement, but the absolute exhaustion students experience after one day, let alone one week, might as well be a prison sentence. The most exhausting thing that most can fathom is the upkeep to have a good reputation, the constant feeling of being on alert, and especially the pressure of always having good grades.
On top of that, going to work and getting home at 10 p.m. only to do three more hours of homework and studying for extreme effort to be called the “bare minimum” is more than enough to push students over the edge.
The amount of homework and pressure from teachers, peers, counselors, and social media in too much. Students that make honor roll every year, participate in extracurriculars, and do even more are being convinced that their work is the bare minimum and that they’ll barely make it into community college.
This is not an exaggeration.
This is unacceptable.
Students need to be given the resources and encouragement that their work is good enough. This constant academic pressure is too overwhelming for the average student, especially students who do more than the bare minimum. Counseling is not enough when the same counselors are also promoting students to push harder to the point where they have averages of 100s, are presidents in three clubs, and volunteer. Schools should not be known for promoting double standards.
Even worse, the standards on social media promote working until the early hours of the morning and insinuate that students should all but kill themselves to get the best grades. They use movie icons such as Rory Gilmore and Elle Woods and use their success as an example to promote a toxic study culture. They use the ideology of “if they can do it, so can I” and twist it in such a way that it seems like breaking yourself to study and succeed at a young age is normal.
News flash: it’s not.
At the end of the day, students should recognize that their hard work is enough and that they are worthy of recognition, even if they didn’t spend eight hours studying. Even if students enjoy this lifestyle, it should still be made known to them that they don’t have to break themselves to become something.
A person’s worth does not come from their academic achievements, and their academics will likely not even matter in the span of four years. Don’t put a person’s worth into their grades because there is so much more to them. Instead, promote individuality and do the things that make them happy.
