Four years fly by, and for many teens, so do their chances to appreciate their high school education. As a rising senior at a prestigious New York City prep school, I have seen students too distracted by their plans for the future to take full advantage of their education in the present.
To illustrate my point, let me describe a common classroom scenario. In a class of twenty juniors, perhaps only four are taking copious notes, their eyes glued to the teacher and practically brimming with the sixteen ounces of coffee they chugged within the last hour. The next six students are less eager. Lying open next to their notebooks are either their planners showcasing their large to-do lists, or their notebooks for their next class in which they have a test. Three students fight hard to keep their eyes open and discreetly rest their heads in their hands, angled away from the front of the classroom. One student has likely foregone all sense of shame and is sound asleep. The last six students’ chairs are empty; a high percentage of juniors are so often either over-exhausted or sick during second semester that numerous absences have become the norm.
None of these students are slackers. The issue lies in the consecutive sleepless nights, the impossibly full course loads, and the demanding extracurriculars that occupy the lives of high schoolers with high aspirations. The goal, as most upperclassmen will admit, is to get into top colleges. As that goal is becoming more and more difficult to achieve with each year, students, parents, and teachers are cramming in as many impressive commitments as they can so that the students can be competitive in the college application process. As a result, these students are ironically losing remarkable learning opportunities already at their feet.
It is time to reevaluate how we high school students define “success,” that slippery, ambiguous term. Should we always view success through a forward-thinking lens, so that we only focus on college, graduate school, and our careers? If so, we will never be able to correct our lives’ failings in the present; the to-do lists will grow, and fatigue and detachment will continue to plague many high school classrooms.
No single party is at fault for driving high school students so close to the edge. Some parents certainly have their share of the blame—for constantly hounding their children about B+ grades and instilling in them a desperate mission to attain perfection in a plethora of activities. Teachers and school administrators add to the problem by assigning mountains of homework and holding students to college-level expectations for academic performance.
In all likelihood, however, the students themselves carry the most responsibility for their current predicament. They begin to measure “success” by comparison, and life becomes an arms race to see who can carry the most demanding schedule to have the best chance of getting into the best school.
Meanwhile, there is no pleasure in sitting down to write an essay if you know you have to study for an Honors Calculus test, translate 120 lines of The Aeneid, edit six articles for the newspaper, and close your eyes at some point, all during the same night.
Of course, we should all be so lucky to have these complaints. The students at elite prep schools, despite their overscheduling, are still receiving a top-notch education. Still, valuable learning experiences and formative years are melting away while students struggle to manage balancing acts at these renowned institutions. I shudder to envision a generation of prep school students arriving at Ivy League schools in the fall of their freshman year burned out and dispassionate. Success should lie in the process, not at the finish line.