Student Burnout
TW: suicide, slight mentions of drug addiction
Going into high school, I only ever pulled an all-nighter once, and that was to see if I could. It was horrible; I had no energy and I fell asleep as soon as I got home. I swore to never do it again. By the time Junior year started, all-nighters were just a weekly occurrence; it became second nature to figure out which classes I could sleep through within the first five minutes of reading the aim. I couldn’t think of a time where I wasn’t tired and by the time quarantine started in March. I didn’t care that I was going to miss school; I was just happy that I could finally sleep. We all know this struggle, and we all know how terrible it feels. So why do we do it? The answer is simple: we essentially have to.
We’re forced to work until we drop, being pitted against thousands of other faceless students who are just one step ahead of us, one grade point average higher than ours or one extracurricular more prestigious than ours are. The idea that you can be anything is blissfully ignorant of the fact that we have to be everything to even stand a chance for admittance into the top colleges. This rat race creates a hostile competitive environment for every student, with friends suddenly becoming secretive with their grades come college application season and posts about perfect scores online, only adding to the stress that you’re not good enough. In flagships schools like Stuyvesant and Regis, it’s almost taboo to mention that you don’t particularly want to go to a T25 university. And don’t you dare mention that you don’t want to go to college straight out of high school; you’ll be crucified by students and counselors alike for “wasting your time” in such an advanced school.
Through this stress, we often sacrifice our mental and physical health in order to stay on top. I’ve had close friends turn unrecognizable from the constant lack of sleep and the addiction to coffee and adderall in their effort to get into Columbia, Stanford, or any of the other colleges that are idolized by the workaholic culture in our schools. Whenever a test is coming up or there’s a paper due, we often say that we want to die as a joke. Although most of these are truly just jokes, there’s always that thought lingering in the back of our minds, ready to come back up whenever there’s another test. There’s a reason that in the past decade, suicide rates among teens have gone up significantly. It doesn’t just stop in high school either; the beautiful gorges in Cornell’s campus hauntingly juxtapose the suicide nets hanging ominously over them, a somber commemoration for the students who’ve tragically ended their lives there.
So what can we do to help? For this, we have to recognize that the idolization of the Ivy League and similar schools will always be there simply because they’re the best. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either—students with particularly high drive deserve a place to go to where their full potential will be reached. In the end, you have to do what will make you happy. If you are overstressed about the work you get in high school, smaller, less work-intensive schools are a valid choice. College shouldn’t just be about learning and studying because at its essence, that’s not what college is meant to be. The university you go to is the last transitionary place between your childhood and adulthood; the last place where you can have fun without having too much work to be done. You’re meant to enjoy it, and if you can’t enjoy it in an Ivy League, then not worrying about applying to one is 100% okay!
It’s also okay to not want to go to a conventional college Not everyone is interested in STEM subjects, and by pressuring people into getting an education focusing around those, that person is robbed of reaching their full potential. It’s time that schools begin to introduce the idea of students going to trade schools, culinary schools, and other specialized colleges. Even if you’re good at math or science, you may have a passion that lies outside the purely academic world, and you shouldn’t feel pressured to go into a STEM path.
Finally, the biggest problem resides in the disregard for mental health. When we’re shoved into a system that pits us against each other with no one emphasizing our mental health until we reach a one-semester health class in freshman year, we grow up believing that nothing is as important as our grades. In fact, we - as said before - ruin our mental health for a better GPA. The stigmatization of discussion on mental health has to be changed, with an emphasis on how to maintain a work-life balance starting at an early age.
