Stress In The Overachievers

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.

Overachievers, by Alexandra Robbins, is an exposé about the lives of driven high school students at Walt Whitman High School in Maryland. Throughout the book Robbins central argument is that college admission expectations have made high school a very cut-throat environment, leading students who try to meet these expectations to have deteriorating mental and physical health.

In article How Kids Learn Resilience, Paul Tough argues that stress can push a child into a cycle of failure in school, harmfully impacting a child’s education and outside life. He claims that stress is apparent in every student’s life; however some have more and this stress has a direct connection on the child’s success both in school and out. Stress can be caused by many things, such as economic, family, or even social problems. The stress prevents a student from staying focused in school because they are distracted by other problems. Since they are not able to focus, they do not perform well at school, leading to bad grades, which leads to more stress. This cycle continues and the student is unable to learn as the workload gets more complicated.

In the novel, Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, author, Alexandra Robbins conveys the message that today’s society, including school systems, parents, friends, and students themselves, puts so much pressure on students to succeed (which means doing well well on standardized tests having high GPAs/class ranks, and being accepted into prestigious schools and universities.) This extreme amount of pressure can result in students not learning as much while at school, as well as unhappiness and other issues. Robbins conveys this message throughout the novel by following multiple students around school at Walt Whitman High to discover what the “perfect” overachiever secretly goes through in order to be successful.

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.

Here at Greenbrier High School, we have over 1500 students. Out of those 1500, many of us are in challenging and rigorous classes while also participating in extracurricular activities. Many are able to have outstanding grades, while also being active in their school and community. The stressful situations we experience, or adversity, heightens our ability to do well under stress and continue to stay determined. Personally, when I have a large amount of homework or am under a great deal of stress it makes me more determined on performing my best. Without the pressure from my classes, I may not have been able to maintain my high average. From my experiences with adversity, it proves to have a beneficial effect on the way I handle demanding

In this day and age, the education system in the U.S. has become a prevalent issue within schools which causes burnout, especially in high schools, and there are many root problems – one being the decline of motivation and the increase of expectations and pressure. The education system is in dire need of a re-evaluation and rework. In The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, there is a large variety of students, with a focus on the highs and lows of student lives. The education system has proven to have a different effect on all students, but now with a focus on burnout students. The motivation for school, and the work that comes with it, falls on students.

Putting students under as much stress as possible is a great way of teaching them how to become successful adults ready to take on life in college or even go straight into

A major academic stressor that college student have are grades. In college, in order to get into a certain program for the career students are competing with each other due to grades.

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 -

Generalized anxiety is a problem that the United States faces nationwide. As we grow older and move into educational settings that are more taxing, anxiety becomes more prevalent. Today, college students are facing more stress than ever before. They are constantly pushed to be the best they can be, to be in the most extracurricular activities they can be in, and to attend the best schools possible. All of these goals and high expectations lead students to be harder on themselves, which makes other aspects of their life fall by the wayside, leading to high levels of stress and pressure.

Thesis:  Today I will discuss about sources and effects of student stress and efficient ways to manage this emotional and physical strain.

Stress is no new phenomenon. It’s been around as long as man and has captivated scholars and physicians alike. With the growing demand for degrees in the professional world comes the growth of the number of college students. The relationship between stress and college students has become the subject of on-going research. Several studies show that stress in college students is increasing with time and the authors of those studies are attributing this to an increased number of students. Other research seems to indicate that it isn’t necessarily the stress that is increasing but the awareness of it. Increased awareness of stress, and its unique toll on individuals, allows colleges and students to recognize

A very important factor of stress is school. School can cause a lot of stress. "One of the greatest sources of pressure is school. Where we are herded like cattle from room to room, chewing on our cud, while the hay of knowledge is force fed to us as we are trying our hardest to gulp it down as more and more is shovelled in"( ).Grades can act upon stress. Students may think that you always need good grades, parents can cause this or even just their own minds. Teens want to get into a good college so they stress. "Stress is created by parental pressure to perform and to stand out among other children. When they can't rise up to that expectation, or during the process of meeting it, children may suffer from frustration, physical stress, aggression, undesirable complexes, and depression"( ). Students who are involved in extra activities, usually develope unfriendliness, jealousy, shyness, and may become loners ( ). "Over scheduling a student's life can put them under stress. A child's in school and after school activities should be carefully arranged to give them some breathing space. Parents may want him to learn music, painting, or be outstanding in a

Newth (2011) claims that modern day stress seems to be more widespread than ever causing interference with human intellect, emotional and interpersonal functioning. Therefore; I suggest that students will encounter stress and it will impact their academic performance. In this fast pace and performance driven society each organization needs well performing people. The only way we will know what people require to become productive and less stressed is to explore topics as my research question. The topic