The Overachievers, by Alexandra Robbins Essay

I attend a predominantly upper-middle-class school where many of its students feel an immense amount of pressure to succeed and often overlook opportunities they are truly passionate about, instead

On the other hand, though high schools are lenient on the effort students put in, they are more strict on time and freedom. Students go from being “babysat” and told what to do and when to do it. Yet when they go off to college, they are met with more freedom than they know how to handle. Because of this big change responsibilities are not always being handled. All because students never had to manage their time they relied on the high school teachers to do it for them, so they are now crippled into a series of procrastination.

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

In the story “I Just Wanna Be Average” the author Mike Rose argues that society very often neglects and doesn’t see the full value and potential of students.

In Mark Edmundson’s article Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here, published in the Oxford American on August 22, 2011, he talks about his college experience and what others need to do in college to be successful. Getting an education is hard because there are too many distractions, but find something you enjoy doing or else you’ll be bored and work hard to become that. There are a lot of paths to choose from in life and going to college is one of the best to choose. Edmundson must also agree with this since he is pushing kids to try harder in school. However, Edmundson points out some very key points as to what students need to do.

This novel relates to modern day because most teenagers are known to struggle with insecurity issues in high school. Some students think they aren’t smart enough while others just

The goal of wanting to succeed is quite natural for everyone. It is not unjust to assume that all students want to become successful as well. However, some students are more determined to succeed than others and take extreme steps to do so. Richard Rodriguez’s The Scholarship Boy discusses the issue with scholarship students. He argues the overachieving student has an eager obsession with learning. Although Rodriguez addresses the scholarship boy obsession with success, he fails to describe the undergoing stress of the overachieving student.

Alexandra Robbins in chapter four of overachievers, has said throughout the chapter that students cannot cope with so much school related stress that it affects their mental health and general well-being. She does this by addressing the concerns of the students that she has been following that results in stress. She emphasizes students lack of sleep that ultimately affects their attentiveness at school. She also includes the effect of No Child Left Behind and how school practices have transitioned into focusing on america’s testing culture than the pursuit of creativity from students. She claims that cheating is on the rise and is becoming a standard practice within students because it helps relieve the pressure that students get buried in. Skeptics would disagree with her arguments of students’ unhealthy school relating stress by pointing out that students have their own right into what they choose to participate and how well they want to excel in a classroom and if it's too much they can stop. But like AP Frank and many other students across america including myself; parents force their children to achieve higher, And creating the image that they aren’t good enough or they won't get into college. And one thing I can strongly agree on is the lack of sleep that really creates stress!

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 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 topic of the Overachiever would be that students are being pushed to their fullest in order to get into the most prestigious schools, however, some students hardest just isn’t enough due to the modern education system. For instance, Alexander Robbins was told “She’s not a great student. She’s not going to get into a top college” even though the student Julie was a 4.0 student who participated in many extracurricular activities (5). Even though many of these students had what it took to get into these prestige colleges they still pushed themselves to others expectations which caused them to make bizarre actions. Parents will tend to go the extra extent in order to get their children into a wonderful college for example, “It’s not unusual

TV? Video games? Social media? Maybe, but the odds are just as strong that it is homework that has students burning the midnight oil. . According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students average three hours and six minutes of homework a night. This amounts to nearly half of the time students have at home between the end of school and bedtime. And in addition to contributing to a lack of sleep, academic obligations are a stressor of their own. According to health-line, seventy percent of students said that they are often or always stressed over school work and fifty-six percent listed homework as a primary stress. Another thing hanging over the heads of high school students everywhere are standardized tests such as the ACT and the SAT. As most students already know, scholarships are mostly based on grade point average, test scores, and financial need. Therefore getting through college is a nightmare slowly approaching because if students don’t have at least 2 of the three things mentioned, then there will be fewer scholarship opportunities.. The competition between students for these scholarships is very intense, but this is not the only thing happening between students.

Earlier this year, CNN published an online article entitled “Study That Says Firstborns Are Smarter Leads to Debate Among Parents.” The article seeks to summarize a 2015 National Bureau of Economic Research working, then expand on that summary with individual opinions. The author, Kelly Wallace, begins by characterizing the paper as concluding that “firstborn children do better in school than us kids who were born later.” Wallace claims that the researchers identify three categories in which parents impose stricter rules on their firstborn than on subsequent children, causing this discrepancy: TV watching, homework monitoring, and responses to bad grades. After this, the article stops explaining the study and moves toward editorializing. First, it speculates about the validity of the findings using the specific evidence of bloggers, reality stars, authors, and psychiatrists. For example, one parent believes that she is not “easier” on her second-born. The author then cites successful middle children Bill Gates and Thomas Jefferson as counterpoints to the study, but prosperous first children Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs as evidence of its validity. Next, the article offers explanations for the grade dichotomy that deviate from those proposed in the study. A psychiatrist claims, for instance, that parental verbal involvement is “watered down” for later-born kids. Lastly, a reality TV actor draws on personal experience to claim that the most successful parenting strategy

Yet still take the initiative every day to get up and work on school work and for some of the millions of students go into a campus! But what truly drives a college student to want to learn? Is it the need for a batter paying job? Is it to benefit your family? Or to maybe just tell yourself “ Hey I did this!” I think it could be all three but when it comes to most high school students getting overwhelmed with the things that are going on in their home lives and bring it to school when they should be paying attention. “High schoolers dropping out can be attributable to the social climate, particularly those elements dealing with student participation and the severity of the problem environment.” (Pittman, Haughwout, December 1987) As we age we realize that college is going to be required of us at some point so why not do it now. We as college students psych ourselves up for this awesome experience, to find that it is stressful and way harder than we thought college was going to be, we learned in high school. So, we go into everything blind thinking one way to find that it is another. But no matter what gets in some of our way we keep going knocking out one class at a

Taking required classes and doing the school work is a lot more vigorous than what people imagine. Ideally people, especially new college students, hold the thought of taking the required courses just to get it over with. However, there is no time to ease up on the school work because as time passes, it will only become heavy. As well in movies, students will often find themselves staying up long hours of the night gulping down coffee just to finish or study for further assignments. Other than that, people will soon face the realization that the work will feel like it is