Angela Maske--First Semester Speech

I come to you from a dangerous world. A world full of deception, lies, manipulation, and ruthless beings who will go to any lengths to secure their targets. I’m talking, of course, about high school. We Academy students are no strangers to cutthroat competition, and for many of us, every day is a challenge to juggle demanding classes and fifteen extracurricular activities while prepping for the ACT and doing community service work. The battle for higher test grades, higher GPAs, and a higher class rank consume us on a daily basis. Mental breakdowns are not unheard of...not even uncommon. So, what does all this drudgery promise us, besides the far off prospect of “success”? Dr. Christine Carter, a sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, pointed out that higher success actually correlates to lower levels of happiness and health in high school students. Overachievement has become an obsession, a fixation--and a perilous one at that. It has turned from a simple pursuit of personal success to a health crisis, and a contributor to a growing epidemic. So, how can we address this problem? We will start by examining the causes--why we push ourselves past our mental, physical, and emotional limits in order to reach higher goals. Then, discussing the implications that turbulent overachievement has on current adolescents as well as  generations to come.  Finally, we will consider some solutions to this issue, in order to bring achievement and competition back to a healthy level.
First--what motivates today’s teens to take such drastic measures to achieve success? While we may each point to our own individual influencers--Tiger Mom, anyone?--experts suggest a larger, overarching factor. The documentary film “Race to Nowhere” posits that the United States’ bigger-is-better, performance-driven mentality places overwhelming societal pressure on our generation to attain individual success. On a more basic level, psychologist Abraham Maslow attributes the inclination for all humans to achieve goals to the need for self-actualization--that is, the desire to fulfill one’s individual potential. Self-actualization is  indisputably beneficial, not to mention crucial to a functioning capitalist society. However, when extrinsic stimulating factors are taken in conjunction with it, as nearly always is the case, the pressure can prove to be too great. Coercion from our parents, rivalry among peers, and increasingly stringent educational standards only add to this pressure, and for many teens, it’s only a matter of time before that stress becomes too much to bear.
As it turns out, high achieving students experience a slew of negative effects under overwhelming amounts of pressure. We joke about school leaving us mentally unstable all the time, but it turns out that excessive stress can actually leave students with a mental disorder. The frequency of depression and anxiety in American youth has been rising for nearly the past century. The more stress that is placed upon teens, the more likely they are to develop one of these conditions.  In fact, a study conducted by Dr. Keith C. Herman at the University of Missouri indicates that the more academically competitive a school is, the more instances of depression occur. Skeptics note that, despite the increase in school work and consequential stress levels for high school students in recent years, academic performance remains stagnant. Many actually want to increase schools’ academic rigor in order to attempt to bring up the United States’ ailing math and reading scores. What they fail to recognize, though, is that placing higher standards on students ends up sacrificing something that should be at the very core of our education system--a love of learning. As expressed by Huffington Post teen blogger Reema Kakaday,  so-called “success” renders education meaningless. The rigid demands of schools and escalating competition for college admissions has put off many of the brightest, most gifted students and forced them to conform to conventional standards of academic measurement. What’s more, high pressure academic environments often overemphasize static educational objectives while ignoring the analytical and creative skills that many individuals have to offer. A teacher interviewed in “Race to Nowhere” noted that, “Our students are pressured to perform; they’re not necessarily pressured to learn deeply and conceptually.” If these conditions continue, we will end up with more generations of suffering students and an uninspired workforce.
What solutions can we offer to mitigate these pressing issues? Unfortunately, American education reform is slow moving, and what little progress we might see within the next fifty years is not likely to be radical. We can, however, take small steps ourselves within our school and local communities to prevent high achievement and academic competition from exerting such negative consequences. Class rank, for example, has been shown to foster unhealthy rivalries among peers. Many high schools have already done away with class rank; maybe it’s time we did too? I am by no means suggesting that we should all give up our work ethic and lose sight of our goals; each and every single one of you in this room have displayed your intellectual affinity and drive for success and you should never lose sight of that. But what we should do is aim for a more positive, synergetic environment, and keep in mind what is really important and what will ultimately matter more than a GPA or ACT score: our health and our happiness. In the same vein, we should also remember to make improvements on an individual level--assess your abilities, know your limits, and be true yourself. Strive for excellence, but maintain integrity. Don’t let stress rule your life, because it will inevitably take its toll.
We have examined the causes, the implications, and some proposed solutions to the crisis we are facing as students each and every day. I’d like you to consider the cliche, yet very relevant words of Winston Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” How many A’s you get,  how well you do on the PSAT, what colleges you get into...these factors reflect you, yes. But they do not define you, and they never will. What defines you is your drive, your wit, your charm, your passion, your honesty, your kindness, your optimism….your personality. So as you leave this classroom today and go on to cram for finals this weekend, there’s just one thing I’d like you to consider--what defines you?