Good Grades Can Kill

I am someone who gets a lot of stomach aches. I get them in the morning, noon, and night ever since I can remember. To relieve the pain, I tried changing my diet, breathing exercises, and working out more. All my remedies focused on healing my physical self. It never occurred to me that the root of the pain could be caused by my emotional and mental state. It wasn’t until many years later that I was diagnosed with anxiety, OCD, and depression. The way I handle and react to situations started to make more sense with my new diagnosis. As I was navigating my new life, I was asked by my doctor to identify big stress points in my life. I soon realized my biggest stress point was school.

Growing up, I was always a straight A student. My name frequently visited the dean or principle’s list. I was a parent’s perfect dream, but I was miserable. The constant pressure of succeeding and the fear of under achieving was paralyzing. Getting good grades was ruining my mental health. And in return, my mental health was ruining my actual health. As I entered high school, I soon noticed that many of my classmates suffered from the same way of thinking. Getting good grades is bad for today’s student.

I believe getting good grades is not beneficial to today’s students because of the anxiety that comes along with constantly overachieving. Today’s high school students are seen to be suffering from school related anxiety more than in the past years. In NPR’s, “School Stress Takes a Toll on Health Teens and Parents Say,” the article states, “Almost 40 percent of parents say their high schooler is experiencing a lot of stress from school, according to a new NPR poll conducted with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.” Parents are noticing that school is affecting their children in a way that they never experienced. Parents empathize with their children but cannot comprehend the struggles that today’s students are asked off. A highschoolers school stress can come from a number of different things. Arguably, the biggest stressor is maintaining a good GPA and transcript to be accepted into a good college. NPR gives the example of Nora Huynh who becomes inconsolable upon learning the news of not receiving a perfect 4.0 GPA on her high school report card. Her mother is shocked to see how her high, but not perfect, GPA has negatively affected her daughter. The message that highschoolers are getting is that doing your best is simply not enough.

One might think that getting accepted into a good college is an end to the school stress, that college is the end all be all. That might be the case for some students but not for all. For those students who continue to suffer from school related stress, their mental health will continue to worsen. Schools and colleges are aware of the mental health struggles their students suffer with but do little about it. Higher Insider Ed acknowledges this notion by saying, “More specifically, the stress children, teenagers and college-age students feel about grades along with the pressure they experience from parents and teachers are directly linked to the widely reported mental health crisis in these age groups”. Untreated mental health problems within young individuals can be detrimental. Sadly, school stress has led to students committing suicide. Higher Insider Ed writes about Worchester Polytechnic Institue having three students commit suicide within a year. WPI is known for their rigorous STEM program in which all three students were a part of. It is not misleading to say that the difficult program is what led to these students choosing to end their own lives. After the death of the three students, WPI acknowledged the need for more mental health support on campus. However, the university has made no change in how they grade and teach their programs.

The pressure of getting good grades is killing today’s students. High school students aren’t just taking math, social studies, and English anymore. Today’s students are taking AP U.S. History, AP Calculus, and College level English classes- all at the same time. Taking these classes allows a student’s GPA to be above the normal 4.0. Colleges today look for those overachievers, leaving those who aren’t ready for college level classes in high school to be already left behind. School is not the only thing in a teenager’s life, and it shouldn’t be. Most high schoolers are in extra curriculum’s such as sports, have a job, and or just want some down time to hang out with their friends. All these activities are needed as stress relief to keep a healthy mind; however, today’s students simply do not have the time. These commitments and schooling only intensify as the students enter college. College courses get harder and the stress of committing to a major can be overwhelming.

Along with parents, I think it is easy for adults and institutions to forget how stressful and intense school can be for today’s students. It is important for schools to start acknowledging their student’s mental health. Sadly, it was too late for the students at WPI but not for other schools. With proper care and new grading systems, student anxiety and depression would reduce in numbers. Normalizing being average in today’s society could save lives.

References

“Grades are at the Center of the Student Mental Health Crisis.”

“School Stress Takes a Toll on Health, Teen and Parents say“