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 physical health. As I entered high school, I soon noticed that many of my classmates suffered from the same way of thinking and feeling. Getting good grades is bad for today’s student.
The anxiety that comes along with constantly overachieving from getting good grades is not beneficial. Today’s high school students are suffering from school related anxiety and parents are concerned. NPR’s Patti Neighmond 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 related stress is affecting their children’s mental health in a negative way. Parents empathize with their children but cannot comprehend the struggles that today’s students are asked off. 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 caused her daughter such emotional stress. Nora’s mother feels as though her daughter is doing well in school and should be proud of her accomplishments. However, is its clear, the message that highschoolers are getting is that doing your best is simply not enough.
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. In today’s society, the push and hustle of balancing high-level courses and extracurricular activities is what leads to academic success, which lead to financial success. Through today’s culture, students are taught that financial success is all that matters.
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. A once praised program is now being looked at as having unrealistic expectations for today’s students. 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. Although it is naive to suggest the institution scrap their whole program, it is not uncalled for WPI to reevaluate their system.
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
Eyler, J. (2022, March 7). Grades Are at the Center of the Student Mental Health Crisis | Inside Higher Ed. http://Www.insidehighered.com. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/grades-are-center-student-mental-health-crisis
Neighmond, P. (2013, December 2). School Stress Takes A Toll On Health, Teens And Parents Say. NPR.org; Patti Neighmond. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/12/02/246599742/school-stress-takes-a-toll-on-health-teens-and-parents-say
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
—This is a beautiful paragraph, Indigo. It sets a tone that is both conversational and informative, and it guides readers without fail from sentence to sentence, thought to thought. I’m always a fan of getting to the point immediately, but this one takes just enough time to get to the claim. The route is painless and I can’t imagine a reader losing patience along the way.
—This paragraph continues the good work of the first, but it falters a little.
—You’ve missed an opportunity along the way to claim that “even now, worrying about this research paper, I’m getting sick to my stomach.”
—Your “actual health” shouldn’t be separated from your “mental health.” They’re both part of your health. But you could distinguish it from your “physical health.”
—You haven’t established a “way of thinking,” so suffering from one comes from nowhere.
—Still admirable.
—You’ve made a “not because” error in your first sentence. Review the Not Because lesson and correct.
—”Are seen to be” dilutes your claim. They’re either suffering or they’re not. Saying that they “are seen to be” suggests that they’re not but are perceived to be.
—The NPR title you’ve quoted sounds like a misquote.
—Vague claims are piling up. “suffering more than in the past,” and “affecting their children in a way they never experienced,” and “struggles that today’s students are asked of” are not clear. They suggest trouble, but that’s all. Then another vague summary: “a number of different things.” We can feel the power slipping away from the argument.
—Nora’s mom’s reaction is also vague: “how her GPA negatively affected her daughter.”
—As soon as the power goes out of an argument, readers have time to question. The one that comes to my mind when you give me time is “Why should grades be awarded for effort? Grades were never meant to measure how hard a student tried or whether she did her best. They’re meant to measure achievement.”
—I broke your long paragraph into two main ideas.
—This one should establish that grade pressure creates a mental health crisis. The quote supports that.
—But you should save the “colleges don’t do much” claim for the next paragraph.
—This argument will be harder to prove, Indigo, but you can’t abandon it.
—Nobody wants the Polytechnic Institute to relax its standards. Its value is the rigor of its program. If its METHODS of achieving scientific excellence are brutal, you could have an argument. If it should admit ONLY students who have demonstrated the needed strength and stamina to excel, you’d have to claim that they could and should effectively screen for vulnerability. It’s a hard sell.
—You’ll get a lot of resistance to the suggestion you offer that they should, instead, “change how they grade and teach.”
—Your paragraphs appear to be out of order. You started out with youth, jumped to the college years, and are now back with the high schoolers.
—This paragraph misses an opportunity for a broader claim, Indigo. Readers wonder who’s to blame for all that stress the high school kids put on themselves. Who says they have to load up on AP courses and extracurriculars?
—You have a chance to argue that the whole culture is obsessed with one kind of success—financial—and that the odds are stacked from infancy. A college degree used to be a meal ticket for life. Now only the “best” college will do, and access to that is limited to the “best” high school applicants who distinguish themselves with perfect scores and massive resumes. That sort of foundation would make the students more obviously the victims of a cut-throat environment in which the strong succeed and the weak get ulcers.
—All will agree schools have a responsibility to RECOGNIZE and AMELIORATE or TREAT symptoms of illness when they see them.
—What grading system would reduce anxiety? And how will colleges maintain their elite status if they don’t have ways to distinguish and “grade” elite students?
—In 3000 words, you may be doing your job by MERELY making the claim that grades are killing our kids. Don’t feel you need to re-engineer our entire society to make it easier for students of average ability to accept their mediocrity.
Comedian Steven Wright famously observed, “Half the people you know are below average.” No social overhaul can change that even if everybody improves.
Provisionally graded. Rewrites are strenuously encouraged (required, in fact, for short arguments in your Portfolio), and Regrades are always available following substantial improvements.
Few students ever respond as thoroughly as you have here to feedback, Indigo. You rose to every challenge and the results are clearly better than the original. Assuming you got good feedback in the first place, the reader is the real beneficiary of your effort and skill.
Regraded. I don’t think you’ll need to revise this any further.