Essay on The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids

(40) With this in mind, Lawrence B. Schlack uses his status effectively, by referring to high school graduates as a destructive force. “The go-to-college tsunami,” in other words, Schlack is trying to convey that students have this perception that they must attend college. And with that said, students place themselves into a situation they don’t know how to handle. Despite the shortage of credibility, Schlack makes up for it with the amount of pathos he provides in the

These expectations are set in hopes that they will help students get into prestigious colleges. An NPR report featured teenagers Tom Poulis and Chelsea Halprin, who shared their thoughts on stress related to high school schedules. Poulis says, “the stress level is very high” due to taking four AP classes, standardized tests, and participating in various after school activities to enhance his college applications. Halprin hoped to attend an Ivy League school. Her schedule included time for homework, class president duties, team sports, mentoring young students, and helping at her synagogue. Despite her impressive schedule, Halprin worried that it would not be enough to meet her goals. The idea that students must overwork themselves and excel in every area has become an emotional and mental burden on teenagers, rather than be a guide to a successful

Being admitted into college is a difficult process, one that requires students to be diligent in their studies, engage in a number of extracurricular activities, and overcome the everyday pressures and challenges that high-schoolers face across the country. Admittedly, not everyone in the United States is born with the same opportunities as socioeconomic factors as well as historic injustices have contributed to a society in which some people are far more likely to achieve upward mobility – of which, obtaining a college degree is a necessary part – than others. While there is need to rectify this reality,

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.

Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle in their book “Rereading America” feel that commencing college is a very disturbing experience. So many things we have to deal while starting college, but the major challenges are expanded difficulty levels and higher expectation which we are not familiar over the years of high school. In order to solve this issue, we have to remodel ourselves by taking up the challenge and rethink about our strength and flaws. To succeed in college we need to be mentally strong and dedicated towards our goal.

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 argues the point 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.

The transition from high school to college is a dynamic time in one’s life that parallels the change from childhood to adulthood. Both of these changes are dramatic and, as a result, feelings are difficult to put down into words. A messy combination of emotions fills the heart, surfacing in strange ways. Confident high school seniors go right back to the bottom of the chain when entering college as freshmen. These students start all over, just like entering grade school or high school for the first time. The move up from high school to college signals the switch from dependence to self-sufficiency. From a personal point of view, going through the experience of graduating high school and transferring to a residential college campus at STLCOP, made me realize I was no longer a kid and capable of making my own decisions.

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.

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.”

In the novel, “A Hope in the Unseen” written by Ron Suskind explains the journey of Cedric Jennings from the Inner City to the Ivy League. Throughout his journey Cedric Jennings has had to navigate many challenges first at Ballou High School, then MIT in the summer, and finally at Brown University. During his High school career at Ballou he received many backlash from his peers because of his devotion to his studies. In Ballou High School, “the school’s dropout/transfer rate at nearly 50 percent, it’s understandable that kids at Ballou act as though they’re just passing through”(Suskind 3) but not Cedric. He had a determination like no other to succeed academically where he would often stay after to finish his homework and work on SAT practice

In today’s society, there is a stigma that one needs a college education to be successful. Due to these overwhelming societal pressures, college students encounter numerous challenges. Two authors who explore these challenges are William Zinsser in his article “College Pressures” and Eric Greiten in his book “The Heart and the Fist”. Both Zinsser and Greitens consider the everyday struggles that college students face. While discussing the same topics, the authors use different writing styles and techniques to illustrate the same idea.

Michelle Gardner Cooper AP Language 16 July 2014 Purloining Adolescence The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins combines students’ struggles with little-known facts in order to convey her distaste for the current state of education in the United States. Personal stories of teenage overachievers form the bulk on this novel. Robbins is an authority on the affect extreme pressure has on high school students from having researched it thoroughly.

In the New York Times article, “College’s High Cost, Before You Even Apply,” Tara Parker-Pope argues that the high-stress atmosphere of college application season experienced by high achieving students is detrimental to many aspects of student’s lives. Tara weaves the impressive argument that for many students, college admissions; especially to selective universities, may seem to hold a golden ticket at a terrible expense. Health, happiness and mental stability to name a few. These detrimental issues brought on by higher education woes are problems that escape J.D. Salinger’s protagonist in his most famous novel, Catcher in the Rye. In a sharp contrast to Holden Caulfield, The New York Times article features high-achieving students rushing into adulthood through a high education medium and are convinced that college acceptance is a precursor to a fulfilled career and a successful

This study investigated the prevalence and relationship between symptoms of depression and SAD, as well as sex differences of these psychological issues. Our results revealed a positive correlation between symptoms of depression and SAD. Specifically, freshman student-athletes who had increased SAD also had increased symptoms of depression. The overall findings of 5% of student-athletes exhibiting symptoms of depression was lower than reported in the current collegiate literature.12 The combined 26% of SAD and subsyndromal SAD was higher than the general college population. Finally, in this group of student-athletes males, reported higher symptoms of SAD than female student-athletes. However, there were no sex differences on which symptoms

   Today a college education can overload students with too many stressful situations. Not only does Stress overload today's college students, but it is also the leading cause of personality disorders. In her essay, Cathy Bell explains that major depressive disorder strikes 5-12% of men and 10-20% of women; half of these people will have more than one occurrence and 15% of them will commit suicide ("Depression for the young"). For instance, many depressives are first recognized and treated during their years in college. For a large amount of people, depression exposes itself because of traumatizing experiences, such as leaving home and/or academic stress. For other students alcohol and drugs become a