A Student's Perspective: Rebecca Goldstein on crunch time
For Newton South students, and for high school students around the country, right now is crunch time.
With college admissions more competitive than ever before, we lucky seniors are avidly focused on our grades, SAT I and II scores, and list of extracurricular activities. I know of seven South seniors applying early to Brown, about that many applying early action to Yale, a handful to Cornell…you get the idea. And with the financial crisis, scoring a scholarship has become more and more of a priority. I have come to regard five hours of sleep as adequate, six hours of sleep as comfortable, and seven hours as positively luxurious.
All this has made us less and less focused on our classes and more and more focused on our grades. The two are inextricably linked, of course, but they have less in common than you might think.
For example, getting the “easy teacher” as opposed to the “hard teacher” in a particular course has become crucial. No admissions committee is going to know if you took the class with the teacher who cancels class once a week or the teacher who gives two hours of homework a night. All they know is that the kid in the former class got an A and the kid in the latter class got a B-.
Furthermore, participation has dropped off significantly. A friend of mine taking AP Literature put it best: Let’s stay you have a calculus test tomorrow, applications due on the weekend, and sports practice before you go home. Are you really going to read and mark up a sonnet for discussion in tomorrow’s Lit class when it doesn’t count for a grade and you can just sit out the discussion? Of course not.
It is in this spirit that we’ve developed a complex system of triaging the work we have to do. It looks something like this:
Starbucks fix > common app essay > SAT studying > supplemental essays > homework for APs > sleeping > eating > homework for regular-level classes.
Our parents are worried about our well-being, and with good reason. The sole comfort is that the end of first semester awaits us. I’ve never been happier about the weather turning cold.
--Rebecca Goldstein '09
As a Newton South grad, I've heard this same played out story for the last 10 years. These 17-18 year olds think they have it so rough, that they are the only people in the country who have to deal with classes, after school sports, and college admissons simultaneously.
If these kids think being a senior in high school is difficult? Then it is no wonder that they have problems dealing with the stress that comes from being in college and life after that.
well welcome to life, Rebecca....it doesn't get any easier!
To all high school and college student, work hard but don't work too hard becuse
you don't have to As, or Bs every courses, just pass them.
I would agree that the competitive pressures and focus on standardized testing is intruding upon time which used to be allocated to classroom education. It would be nice if we could allow students to focus solely on learning!
We are always making choices about what is most important at any given time and the ability to constantly prioritize and reprioritize is a skill that is crucial to success. While it may seem annoying to have to juggle so much, the act of multi-tasking and prioritizing is a valuable and a lifelong skill.
I got into Cal Tech and ultimately went to UC Berkeley. This article exemplifies the laziness that I came to expect from my peers.
Essays are a one-time ordeal, and you shouldn't have to study for the SATs.
So that basically takes your day down to getting Starbucks, doing your homework, eating and sleeping. Since going to school is essentially your full time job, I see nothing to complain about. So stop whining about how hard everything is.
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