Jennifer Glickman, a 17-year-old high school junior, gets so stressed some days from overwork and lack of sleep that she feels sick to her stomach and gets painful headaches.
A straight-A student, she recently announced at a college preparatory meeting with her mother and guidance counselor that she doesn’t want to apply to Princeton and the other Ivy League schools that her counselor thinks she could get into.
“My mom wants me to look at Ivy League schools, but my high school years have been so stressful that I don’t want to deal with that in college,” says Ms. Glickman. “I don’t want it to be such a competitive atmosphere. I don’t want to put myself in this situation again.”
High school has long been enshrined in popular culture — from the musical “Grease” to television shows like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Friday Night Lights” — as a time of classes, sports and overwrought adolescent drama. But these days, junior year is the worst year in high school for many ambitious students aiming for elite and increasingly selective colleges — a crucible of academic pressure.
Almost two-thirds of middle- and upper-middle-income high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area told researchers that they were “often or always” stressed by schoolwork, according to a series of surveys of 2,700 students conducted last year by Stanford University researchers.
More than half the students reported that they had dropped an activity or hobby they enjoyed because schoolwork took too much time. More than three-quarters reported experiencing one or more stress-related physical problems in the month prior to the survey, with more than 50% reporting headaches, difficulty sleeping, or exhaustion….
Read it all from the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Irenaeus’ prescription: Take a year off from school and work.
The job shouldn’t have to be glamorous. Making minimum wage clearing tables or mopping floors is a bargain if it gives you time to unstress, do some different kinds of growing up, and appreciate what a privilege education (particularly higher education) is.
HS students tend to be at their most serious and involved during their junior year…at least that is my observation from 10 years of teaching.
Part of the problem is that we are pushing our kids to achieve more, but we are pushing the high-achieving kids to make up for what their peers aren’t doing. The simplistic nonsense that is the “challenge index” (Number of students divided by number of AP tests taken) is an indicator. We had a senior this year take 9 Advanced Placement courses.
The thing is, scores don’t count. So administrators, to appease politicians, push kids into courses for which they are not ready and they often do not do well.
Then there is the problem of extra-curriculars. Everyone wants to be champion. As a band director, I held the line at one after school reahearsal each week, all year, until 4. Regrettably, my coaching colleagues begin unofficial practices of an hour or two daily for next season the day after they are eliminated from the playoffs. (You don’t HAVE to go to the weightroom, but…)
A little restraint on all sides would be in order.