Friendships are a funny thing. They are something that needs work and energy spent on them but can also be something that just spring up and develop all on their own.
I am a senior in high school, getting ready to leave my hometown and small high school to venture out into the world and find my path.
At my school it is rare to not really know every person in your grade, considering the small size. However, there was one person that I for some reason, until this year didn’t really ever speak to.
The funny thing is, is that I’d known this person for the past 3 years of my life. But it wasn’t until this very last year we have together that we finally became close.
Friday October 23rd my parents and I made the relatively strenuous drive at 8:30 at night to Redlands University to see my brother at his college Homecoming.
To be honest, I couldn’t care less about football. In fact, I chatted the whole time and not about the plays being made on the field.
But, on Saturday, the day of the largely anticipated game (admittedly, not by me), I went to see something truly unforgettable.
A few hours before the game, Redlands hosted a guest speaker and that speaker was Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.
I read the book a few years ago and loved it, so I was looking forward to her speech. The main idea of Gilbert’s speech was her desire to live a creative life, her journey to attaining that life, and to encourage others into also living this life.
First of all, she was very clear: to live a creative life, you must follow curiosity rather than fear, and the two are closely intertwined.
This deeply resonated with me, as I am the type of person who thinks of every bad side to a situation and lets those (usually improbable) reasons sway me from not doing something.
Gilbert was inspiring, intuitive, and an amazing speaker. The speech was definitely worth having to watch a football game afterward, though I did leave at halftime.
Teachers have said this over and over again since I started high school.
They constantly tell me to not focus on the end result, but to focus on the material, to develop an interest and study it out of enjoyment, not because I want to get a passing grade.
I don’t understand that at all. Why am I being told not to care so much about my grades or to not study only because I want a good grade, when in reality everything comes down to “intelligence” being perceived from a grade.
They say that the grade you get isn’t the important part, so why do we get grades at all?
For a teacher to tell me to calm down and relax and not concentrate or obsess so much over what my grade will be, is hands down the most frustrating thing a teacher can ever say.
Today I came home to hear some of the best news I have all week.
President Obama hates standardized testing almost as much as I do.
The Obama administration has come up with a new plan for standardized testing; capping standardized testing to 2% of classroom time.
Someone finally understands the pressure.
I have spent the past week agonizing over my latest SAT scores.
After receiving a score that I believe it so sub-par to the standards set, I sat in my room for hours and considered my options: maybe I won’t get accepted to any colleges, maybe I should just give up now, maybe I should spend an extra three hours a day studying for this test.
For this is a test that does not demonstrate the magnitude of what I have learned throughout the course of high school, but a test that displays how well I can adapt to it’s irrelevant questions.
Questions that are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, questions that do not reflect how intelligent I am, or how successful I will be in my college career.
Rather, this test gives college admission teams the ability to put my knowledge into a category of advanced or average.
The pressure I have felt throughout the past four years of my life to meet the “above average” score of this test is obscene.
I have spend countless nights laying awake in my bed wondering if the work I have completed in the last four years will be dismissed because of an average test score that I have earned through sitting at a desk for four hours.
The standardized system is flawed.
There is no standard anything for a million adolescent brains that function at different paces and in different ways.
After years of mentally preparing myself to endure the most mentally draining four-hours of my high school career, I have just completed taking a second SAT test.
I have so many thoughts about this tedious task that every high school student in the United States is required to do.
I think it is ridiculous that a standardized test score can determine a student’s future. A good student with a high GPA and a lot of extra curricular activities can get an average score solely because they might not be the best test taker, but that one test score has a large weight on which colleges accept them.
I do not fully understand why standardized tests have become a way of determining students academic careers for such a long time, or why they have become of such a high priority. Although most colleges look at students holistically, California State schools consider students purely on GPA and standardized test scores.
However, I understand the reasoning behind standardized testing; giving students a chance to show the general academic knowledge they have accumulated in high school.
But why does a test have to be the only thing that proves a student has gained knowledge? Why is it that the pressure to get a high-test score can consume a student’s conscience for months so that they focus all of their time studying for one generalized, tricky test?
Everyone keeps saying that this process should be fun and exciting but all I have felt is frustration, confusion, stress and anxiety. To say the least, I am ready for this process to be over. I am ready to already know where I will be for the next four years of my life. I am ready to know what I want to major in – what I want to do with my life.
Another aspect of the college experience that I find extremely frustrating and anxiety producing is the SAT and ACT tests. I hate that our whole academic career can be summed up into a number from one, five-hour test that we took on a random Saturday morning.
Don’t get me wrong – education is supposed to be challenging. But more frequently I’ve heard people say “Is he okay?” Following comes the response, “Yeah but he’s all burnt out.”
Burnout is real. It’s a state of chronic stress that can cause lethargy, depression, and general numbness and not a care in the world. (I suggest you read the link given below.)
“Burnout happens when you’ve been experiencing chronic stress for so long that your body and your emotional system have begun to shut down and are operating in survival mode,” says Dr. Sara Denning, a clinical psychologist based in Manhattan who specializes in dealing with stress and anxiety. “You numb out because you can’t think. You can’t even make decisions anymore.”
Further delving into the article reveals that burnout symptoms were arriving in younger and younger people, as early as college freshman. Which is where I will be next year. And it’s also where I feel like I’m heading next year.
There’s something called Senioritis, and it’s, as described as me, “a high school senior lacking in motivation because WE’RE GRADUATING OMYGOSH.” The symptoms are similar to a burnout, lacking motivation, lethargy, etc. The difference is that Senioritis isn’t usually stress or depression caused. It’s just that knowing how I won’t be here next year to deal with consequences makes me want to… Slack off.
I’ve gotten off topic.
Burnout.
If a college freshman is already feeling the symptoms of burnout, then what does that say about the education system? Are we supposedto be holding these children over a fire with a stick? Maybe. But are we then supposed to let them slow roast until a perfect, golden brown –
– or let them catch on fire and watch them try and quench themselves?
Graphic image aside… There goes my two cents. And I don’t care enough to get them back either.
When I was in first grade, I went to school in Hangzhou International School. The classes ranged from preschool to twelfth grade, totaling to about 312 students. At least, that’s the only number I remember.
HIS is a small private school with students from Japan, Korea, Germany, Australia, you name it. It was a day school, ending at 3, and uniforms were required. Nobody got dress-coded, and each class became very, very tight.
One of my most vivid memories is walking down a long, white hallway decorated with life-sized paintings of dinosaurs. It was an empty hallway with big windows and no doors, so we could be as loud as we wanted. And with 25+ students in my grade, we were definitely loud. We travelled from class to class as a pack, because in lower and middle school, that’s how classes worked.
Photo cred: Byrne Robotics
I was at HIS for 8 years. Leaving China to go to Ojai Valley School was probably the biggest change in my life.
There’s only 114 students at OVS. At least, that’s the only number I remember. We have a dress code and students that ran around campus in all different directions to different classes.
It’s wide, crazy, open, and very, very, very small. You’re basically forced to get to know the people here because we’re kinda-sorta stuck on top of a hill together.
The two college dorms I applied to, Skarland and Moore, with 100 and 322 students living in them. Which are the sizes of the only schools I have ever been to. I guess you can consider me a small-town girl.
It was a small world for me. This school, with about 9,000 students, is going to be an entirely new galaxy for me.
People wonder why teenagers get sick so often, and I think I have found the answer.
We are constantly being run into the ground, overwhelmed with task after task.
I will use myself as an example. I go to school, do my homework, and go to volleyball. Everyday. No breaks in between.
You would think I would get used to it, and I do in some ways. But sometimes the lack of a break catches up to me.
Getting home at 10pm in need of a shower and a snack does not let the teen body get the rest that it needs to stay healthy.
At our age we are growing so much mentally and physically.
If we take the breaks that we need, we are scolded for being lazy or not trying hard enough – but if we do too much we are told that we need to “slow down”.
Confusing, right?
So much is asked of the high school or college student, and yet whenever I say that I can almost always hear an adult scoffing and making some snide remark about how “we have it so easy”.
And perhaps in a lot of ways we do.
I know that I don’t have to worry about paying the bills at the end of every month – and I am so grateful for that.
But I do have to worry about my grades, sports, getting into colleges, trying to maintain some kind of social life, and a lot of other factors that are major stressors.
So why is anyone surprised when 1/3 of the junior class gets a cold, or a fever?
Some of us get only three to five hours of sleep per night because of the work load that is put on us.
Everyone needs a break now and then, and when that break isn’t taken, the human body will find a way to take it.
Our systems are beaten to the ground. And while we may not have to same feats to overcome as some, we have our own.
If the one thing you loved to do more than anything else was inaccessible?
I don’t really know either.
Since I was a toddler, I have been skiing. As soon as the season starts until the day the season ends, I have always taken every opportunity I get to drive up to the mountains. I feel at home on the mountain; I know there is no other place I would rather be.
This year, I have only had a week of ski time in Mammoth.
I guess living in Southern California is not the best place for an avid skier to live.
Photo Credits: statim.guo.uk.com
This brings me to my main point: where would an avid skier live? Aspen? Switzerland? Canada?
In about a year and a half I will be deciding which college to attend for the next four years of my life, which makes me question if I should move out of California and move somewhere I can ski on a regular basis.
But do I really want to move states or countries away from family and friends?
OVS Journalism Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.