Anxiety In American High Schools

Students today undergo constant pressure for perfection, going through extreme efforts to meet this expectation. Alexandra Robbins, an investigative journalist and author of The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, views modern educational culture as a danger to students because it advocates productivity over learning. On the other hand, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post believes that students today are more apathetic than stressed. Robbins perception of today’s schools is more accurate than Mathews’, for students cheat to appear smarter, burden themselves with grueling schedules to impress colleges, and develop mental disorders as a result.

Staring out above the clouds, my feet are warm and snug in the crafted italian boots, with my skis supporting me on the snow; all the worries of high school and its dysfunctionality are behind me. Strolling through the dark tunnels of high school I walk with a defined strut as if trying to impress my peers. It’s in these halls where I feel the anxiety of the world crashing down on me, but up on the fluffy, white, powdered slopes all of that anxiety is gone; it’s just me and my skis.

One of the biggest problems among students within post-secondary are the struggling issues of mental health such as depression, anxiety or stress which leads to the failure of adequate nutrition. The age of when mental disorders are clear to one’s self is between the age of 18 to 24 as this is the age of many adolescents are going into higher education (Kessler et al., 2005) . University students who struggle with depression and anxiety majority of the time is caused by the academic stress of being a leading cause of their mental health. As a survey was conducted by campus counselors, many found an outstanding factor of parental pressure for high grades from their child causing many students stress, depression and anxiety which elevates expectations within the student (Watkins et al. 2001, p. 322). These high rates are due to the feeling of being badgered to achieve high grades and maintain their grades while balancing their social life.

High School Struggles High school can be very stressful, especially junior year. It is very evident that in the book “Overachievers: the Secret Lives of Driven Kids” by Alexandra Robbins, the students are very driven to be successful and often find themselves stressing out. Junior year is often known as the most important year of high school because students start worrying about ACT/SAT scores and they finally start looking at colleges. “But he had been told that junior year was the most stressful in high school. This was the year he had to start thinking about colleges.”

Students with stress usually have trouble doing their school work, because of the strain it can cause. In the article ‘Should Your School Get Rid of Sports’ O’shei says “Being a student today is harder than ever, you are being held to tougher standards -

In researching anxiety, a complex and abstract topic in itself, I first had to significantly limit the scope of my research and identify a common sample population that could speak to the research at large. I chose members of one high school to represent a common body of data, and I chose the Metroplex region for the purpose of accessibility and ease of data collection. Metro High School was investigated in two ways. First, a survey was conducted to quantify data. Then, an interview was designed using a set of predetermined questions to ask a number of students to produce qualitative data. These two elements, quantitative and qualitative results, could encompass the research question in its entirety. Anxiety in itself cannot be

For instance, there are schools that stress students extremely. Numberless of schools have so many high expectations for students that they don’t even realize the damage it does to students. In the article “When Anxiety Hits at School” The Atlantic points out, “High performance expectations” surrounding school and sports result in stress and in turn, anxiety.” In the interest of schools that set high expectations for students, students are not used to having a high standard in school so they feel stressed as a result of this. Schools have to bring about being rigid with their students knowing that students can’t achieve perfection. Schools don’t ask for perfection, but it feels like that for students. To add on, The Atlantic also points

Life is full of deadlines, expectations, and events, whether in great magnitude or not, these things in life cause stress. Human bodies are made to experience stress and react to it. However, there’s a difference between a healthy amount of stress, aka Acute stress; used in “fight or flight” situations, and unhealthy stress, aka Chronic stress- Having so much stress that if not dealt with, leads to various health problems. In a survey done by the American Psychological Association in 2011, more than half (53%) of the population of adults in the United States said that they have had personal health problems due to high stress. Chronic Stress is no simple

“You will only need a pencil for this section of the test. When time is up, please close your test booklet and put your pencil down.” I feared these words. I feared any phrases that consisted of the word “test.” This is the phrase that is used to doom high school students with anxiety early in the morning. This is the phrase that is used to doom high school students with tears and misery. As my testing instructor spoke, my hands became sweaty, my face was dripping with sweat, my stomach was tied in a knot, my body was shivering, and my eyes were weary. I knew what time it was, and I dreaded it ever since. It was time to attempt to accomplish a perfect score on something impossible, rare, and unbearable - the ACT.

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With an increased demand for skilled labors, many students nowadays find themselves needing to complete some form of higher education at college to ensure their success in the workplace and their future career goals. Although freshmen students often enter college with high expectations and ambitions, many eventually drop out of college. Why does that happen? In an ever-changing and more competitive environment, the demanding expectations on college students now soar at unprecedented heights, creating stressful and unpleasant experiences for many of them as they try to keep up with all the burdens inflicted upon them. In their writings, Dr. Christine B. Whelan, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alan Schwartz, and Nisha Ramachandran explore and illustrate some of the stress-creating challenges that freshmen struggle with today. Even though many factors contribute to the huge list of problems for first-year students, many of the problems that create stress for college freshmen fall under the categories of academic factors, (what adverb to add) teachers, and personal-life conflicts.

Adolescents’ without anxiety can join any activity and be perfectly fine and others not so much. It’s imperative to for parents to also select an activity that’s not going to trigger the disorder and make the child suffer more and become more anxious then they already may be. Finding a good match for a child can be difficult but should be taken seriously. The main goal is to find an activity for the child to excel in and to help in not diminish but cope with anxiety

study had showed that there is significant relationship between psychosocial stress induced cortisol elevations and memory retrieval. According to this finding, high cortisol levels will have an effect for people forgetting events. When people

In cognitive psychology, stress is studied in order to identify its effects on a person’s mental process: perception, thinking, learning, and memory (Folk et al.,2017,p. 411). This particular field may seem to be rather similar to social psychology, but cognitive psychology is less in depth. Cognitive psychology helps explore practical ways to encourage better memory retention and the processing of information in a more accurate manner, so that any expounding reactions will be more positive, unlike social psychology where the study is mainly on

Many people in high school, mostly teens, experience dozens of pressure in their life. To be specific, Schoolwork. Most teens want to excel in school, but want to have a social life or play some kind of sport. One thing that teens don’t understand is that once you’re out of high school, you have college, and then maybe graduate school. Our education will not be over just in High School. You have to work hard and these four years of your life, will impact everything that you do. If you mess up even once, it may ruin everything. This article is named, “Teens Biggest Stress? School.” It has been featured on MSNBC.com. It is written by, “The Associated Press”. It explains how 13-17 years old have the most stress in their high school life.