When I was five years old I decided I wanted to go to Harvard. It’s kind of weird, that I, a kid just starting kindergarten, already was thinking about college. But then I thought about it a little, and realized that maybe it’s not.
From a very early age kids from my generation were given a plan of what was expected of them for the future. You are supposed to spend 12 years in school, trying to figure out what you want to do in college so when you go to college you will do well and then start your life and be successful. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.
But wait there’s more. You need to figure out what you want to do, while battling new hormones racing through your body all the time and having all these new emotions about things that you cant explain. Don’t forget the competition of being ranked every day of your life.
Do you know how guilty I still feel about messing up my first quarter grades freshman year because my grandma died? I still wonder what would have happened if I could have just bucked up and gotten over it so my grades wouldn’t have suffered so much, maybe then I would have been in the top of my class instead of the top of the second quartile.
As a person who suffers with extreme anxiety and self loathing school really is hard for me. I have piled so much pressure onto myself at this point that if I don’t preform up to my standards I hate myself all day long. I get anxious for almost every test. I don’t sleep very well because I wonder what is going to happen tomorrow. And it all becomes too much.
I know that I am an extreme example of what teenagers face in high school, but when I look around at the 1000 kids that attend my school I’d say 95% of them have the same unnecessary pressure on them. It just shouldn’t be that way. If this continues what I am is going to become to norm for children and that is something I really don’t want. My sister, who is 10, already puts this pressure on herself that I have on me, and I tell her that her grades don’t matter and that she is smart but it doesn’t help.
We are breeding children with goals that cant even compare to what they are capable of. And that really sucks.
Nothing but the Truth (Pretty Much) 