That 89 percent that could have been a 90 percent is not going to matter to you in five years, believe it or not. I can’t even fathom how often the sentence “but it will look good for college apps,” is heard yearly on a high school campus. Are these four years what define us as humans? I sure hope that’s not the case because I’m so much more than a percentage.

High school is such a small portion of our lives when you really think about it. These four years are all that matter to you right now, but are they all that’s going to matter in ten? What about when our kids go to school? Will that B- you got in geometry matter then? We work so hard to be judged by our performance rather than our person.

What are schools teaching about being a good human? What about how to do our own taxes? Nope, sorry that’s not taught here. I can recite the Pythagorean theorem basically in my sleep, and tell you the difference between an acid and a base; but what about the values of honesty and kindness? Isn’t this all a practice run anyways? Aren’t we being trained for “The Real World”? I’ve only been told that exact statement once or a million times.

Kids these days are on anxiety medications for the amount of stress they’re put under. We run ourselves into the ground for what? To be judged some more? We are expected to put our education before personal health. It is not asked, but expected. We must do whatever it takes to succeed.