Overachievers: The Secret Lives Of Driven Kids

In the article Athletes and Education, Neil Petrie argues, that some colleges let student athletes get little to some amount of homework or projects in classes, while other students have to

Being a freshman is the hardest of your four years in high school. Have you ever been pressured to be the best person you can be? This is how my year was as a freshman. Freshman year was the most different I never thought I would of found my way around the school when I first started to go there. Freshman year was the best year throughout my years of high school and it was the only year I had friends. During this year I had a lot of anxieties which dealt with me thinking I’m gonna be alone and not have any friends throughout the year to support me through the whole thing. Also, I would think of the pressure of not doing good in any of my classes so I would think it would affect my GPA in the future. The transition from middle school to high school was a different type of thing to do.

Journalist Alexandra Robbins ventures back to her old high school to examine the competitive efforts students are having to take to compete on the battlefield that is the education system in her book, The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. Robbins explores the lives of multiple students who are stressed and pressured to maintain good grades and get into an Ivy League college. This text allows for intriguing insight on how the educational system has “spiraled out of control” and displays the different measures students must now take to be the best. Robbins’ The Overachievers is an eye-opening bestseller which exposes the social pressures and anxieties students must overcome in their high school lives as they attempt to impress and prove to colleges they are worthy of acceptance.

August 15, 2013 was the date that I entered high school. I had high hopes for the upcoming high school years to be my best years ever since I was in sixth grade. I expected that I can make more friends, join more club activities, and can choose classes that I really like. Although I was very enthusiastic and eager to start the all new school years, I also had a lot of worries and confusion about it also. The night before I start my freshmen year, the thoughts of failing classes, and be able to graduate high school kept

The 11th year of school, junior year, is considered the hardest year of most people’s academic life. The junior year can be very confusing and hard to prepare for due to the high skill level classes, the SAT test, and the ACT test which all can decide the acceptance into any kind of college. The author of “10 Ways to Survive 11th grade” gives practical and beneficial advice for any student preparing for this formidable year.

High school is supposed to be the place where you have fun and a time in your life you’re supposed to enjoy. Movies often trick you into believing that high school is an amazing time in your life and there is nothing but parties and fun. In Bring it on, they portrayed the fun and exciting part of high school cheer-leading, however they intentionally leave out the tough times high school students’ face in school and in their practices. In other popular movies, such as High School Musical the students have no pressures other than the next basketball game. In reality, this doesn 't happen. The constant pressure is affected by the grade level you are in. In high school, students can be classified based on the pressures that are faced in each grade level into the categories of freshman, sophomores/juniors, and seniors. I am here to help you make your high school experience less stressful.

Every fall millions of American adolescents gear up to apply for the thousands of colleges and universities across the nation. For many students this process is a simple-natural progression through a linear educational track in which no extra preparation, beyond a paper application, is required. However, for many students college preparation can begin as early as conception. Alexandria Robbins follows the stories of nine students from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Whitman is known for and could be summarized by a simple term in which Robbins’ book is also titled: Overachievers. The author explores the hectic nature of helicopter parenting, bureaucratic admission processes, the culture of Ivy (a term describing the upper

Athletes are giving it there all both on the field and in the classroom. College athletes are brought to the school on scholarships to play sports. These athletes are giving it there all going back and forth from classes, to the weight room, to studying, and to practices. But they mostly spend a lot of time practicing rather than going to classes. ““These young men are laboring under very strict and arduous conditions, so they really are laborers in terms of the physical demands on them while there also trying to go to school and being required to go to school.” Says Robert McCormick (2011, Kenneth J. Cooper). What Robert means is that these students have a huge amount of work load on them while also being required to go to school at the same time. These athletes aren’t like every other students. Even before the school year starts, athletes have to come to schools weeks early. Having a summer off is what normal college students have

When I was younger I had a babysitter who was in high school. I looked up to her so much and wanted to be a big girl like her and go to high school. Little did I know that when I got that old I would want to be that little girl again. With senior year beginning I’ve been getting hounded with college emails and universities calling to invite me to visit. Having to make the decision of where I want to go to college, what I want to study, and how I’m gonna make all that happen while still being in high school and getting treated like a child is a bit overwhelming. I never realized how overwhelming and stressful senior year would be.

In high schools today, most seniors are piled down with work and fatigued from after school activities and jobs. On average, most students spend 7-8 hours in school and most have after school jobs which they work for at least 6 hours. Most teachers and parents would say it’s because they’re in preparation for college and adult life. High school seniors are tensed and stressed because they are trying their best to succeed and make something out of themselves. But how can they do that if they have such busy schedule?

Once you’ve been in school for nearly 12 years of your life you think you know all of the tricks to conquering the school year. When a problem arises you think you know the easy way out of it or the perfect way to avoid it. Some kids probably believe that as you continue on through your education these problems will just simply decrease. As a junior in high school, I’ve come to find that that assumption couldn’t be more false. High school came as a scare to me and I felt that I was the only one going through those typical teenage problems; however, after reading How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough, I began to gain some of my confidence back.

Generally speaking, college requires a lot more effort from students than high school. Once you begin your college career, you will see that student’s are more motivated, professors are more demanding, and the workload is a lot more difficult. These academic standards are even more visible in graduate school. Now, although college is filled with adventurous opportunities, it can also be filled with stress. In other words, as a result of everything going on, it’s more common for college students to experience higher levels of stress related to school, work, finance, and in some cases, relationships.

Stress is unavoidable, no matter the situation, location, or time; stress is always present. Stress is found in higher levels during the duration in which students attend college. It is predictably higher among college students, freshmans in particular, because of the extreme expectations set upon them by their parents and, of course, society. The need to please their parents, longing for success in life, and being able to sustain a reasonable income in the future, all of which falls into the hands of college students who are making critical decisions which may decide the outcome for a large portion of their lives. If these students end up hating their future jobs, the stress of having to go back into college to study for a new career

“Almost 80% of the adults in Whitman’s zip code are college graduates, and the median household is three times the U.S average (Kronholz, 2012, p. 5).” Walt Whitman’s High school and Whitman’s Middle school in Montgomery County have over a hundred activities for students. These students have an opportunity to try new things while having an adult role model teaching them outside of school’s basic curriculum. The National Center for Educational Statistics found evidence that students enrolled in extracurricular activities will graduate high school with a 3.0 or higher GPA. These students also learned that commitment is the key to success (Kronholz, 2012). “Whitman says that 96% of its students go to college; its SAT scores in math and critical reading are 250 above the national average (Kronholz, 2012, p. 5).” Two high schools in Long Island, New York did a study on students in ECA’s and those not involved. The data that was received was that these students had a higher graduation rate with a better GPA than non-extracurricular students. The other differences that were shown were the student 's behavior, and that ECA students received more academic awards. The study produced that about eighty percent of students in ECA did better in every category they took data on. (Abruzzo, Lenis, Romero, Maser & Morote, 2015).

Throughout the years, the amount of time that students put forth studying is dwindling down to nearly two thirds of what it used to be. A current sophomore student at George Mason University, Ashley Dixon, has told reporters that college is not what she expected as the work in college is near close to the same work you experience in high school. “I thought I was going to be miserable, trying to get good grades. And I do get good grades, and I’m not working very hard.” This is where the first fault comes in. You can not base the experience of one individual who is simply fortunate enough to not have to try to succeed and compare it to those who actually do try and put forth an effort. Critics are granting the idea that you are awarded high grades when the effort put forth is minimal. This article is speaking to those who are currently in high school and is giving a false pretense to what college is really like. That being said, just because colleges implement physical activity such as sports or clubs, doesn’t mean that takes away from what happens once you 're back home.