Every student has shared the same universal experience that is stress– and every student knows how crushing the weight of this stress can be. Many face daunting expectations from their parent/parents on their academics and do everything that they can in order to meet these expectations; others simply put this burden upon themselves and strive to be the perfect person that they think they have to be. 75% of teenagers in America have expressed that they feel anger, sadness, fear, and stress while they are in school, and it is also reported that high-schoolers and middle schoolers feel that they are either often or always feeling stressed. It has also been found that in 2023, 61% of teenagers from the ages of thirteen to seventeen have felt stressed over producing satisfactory grades. This stress has left many students in the constant mindset that if they are not absolutely academicallly perfect, their world will end; many have let it.
I am no exception to these statistics, as I have felt the same levels of stress and the same burdens as everyone else. When I was a kid, my family used to always call me the “smartest girl of our family” because I had always gotten straight A’s in school and was always working hard academically; they said that I would have no trouble in choosing to do whatever I wanted in the future. In freshman year, I thought that my whole life was over, that I wouldn’t get to choose what I wanted to do with my life, that my chances of getting into any college were none simply because I got a B+ in my Honors English class. I beat myself up over it for weeks because I felt that I was slipping from this “smartest girl of our family” title, and it made me panic. If I wasn’t smart, then what was I? I had built my entire life and put all of my energy and focus around my grades and school that became blind to my own needs; I wasn’t happy and hadn’t been for a long time. It became clear that instead of allowing myself to be happy, to be truly happy, I just distracted myself from feeling negative.
When I finally realized just how much school was taking a toll on me (having constant headaches, sleeping problems, depression, and anxiety) I thought “How silly is it that I am pouring so much of myself into four small years of high school when I have 50-70 years of my life ahead of me?”. And truly, it is silly to believe that your whole life can only ever consist of highschool and that if you’re not perfect, you won’t get anywhere. Reality check: the world offers you so much more than that, and your life is worth so much more than that test in math class. Life is more than school, and even though that is hard to accept for some people, I promise that it’s true. There are so many people that have genuinely lost their way and fail to realize the gift of living in the present and take a moment to breathe. The saying “Stop and smell the roses” isn’t just a cliche quote, it’s a genuine concern for those that engulf themselves in their goals so much that they lose who they are.
Life is scary and intimidating to think about when you’re not focusing on school; but it’s actually not as scary as people make it out to be. Life is laughing until your stomach hurts, admiring sunsets, binging your favorite show while you eat your favorite food, finding money on the street, listening to the mourning doves when you wake up early, and finding a new music artist you didn’t know existed before. Life can be made up of big events, but it is also made up of small, meaningful experiences that make you happy. Ten years from now, you’ll be dancing in your own kitchen in your own house, listening to music with your significant other and laughing. Or maybe you’ll be getting ready for work in your single apartment and plan to treat yourself later in the night to some nice alone time when you get home; maybe you’re neither. There are so many options for you in life, so many ways to be happy, and none of them are dependent on you getting a perfect grade in every class. Allow yourself to fall in love with being alive and free yourself of the shackles of academic stress. Of course, stress is perfectly normal to have and it’s okay to still keep it with you; after all, stress comes with any responsibility. But bits of stress can be good for you; it can help you complete tasks, spend your time wisely, and help your body become stronger than it used to be by enhancing the immune system and rebuilding cells. I want to emphasize that I said bits of stress. Stress is only good for you if you know how to control it. Do not let stress control your life and miss out on so many opportunities; instead, allow stress into your life when you need it, but dismiss it when it is not needed.
In order to live a happy life that you want, you’re going to have to disappoint your parents a bit. That’s scary, I know, but you cannot allow yourself to be subject to every single one of their expectations for you and you most certainly cannot allow them to dictate your life. This life belongs to you, afterall, not them. Think about your priorities and the choices you want to make in order to live the life you truly desire instead of confining your freedom to a small box because you want to be perfect. There is no such thing as perfection in anyone and you’ll only wear yourself down to a stump thinking you can reach such an impossible goal.
When you get older, you’ll learn so much about yourself that you never thought you would and things about you will change that you thought would always stay the same. Your style in clothing will change, your type in people will change, you’ll find a new food you absolutely adore, and you might get the chance to travel to places you’ve always dreamed of going. There are so many more things to life than just school and there are so many things waiting for you out in the world and so many things inside of you ready to be discovered that you have yet to find. Your life is long and going to be beautiful and there is so much more than getting perfect grades in highschool, because the world does not end when you are seventeen.
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