There are three more days left in the school year, and five more days until I go to California for college visits. There is still a mountain of schoolwork to be done before the end of the school year. And there is just one more summer separating me from upperclassman status.
Now is, I believe, as good a time as any to reflect on why we, high school students, torture ourselves so much for the sake of good grades and "respectable" extracurricular lists. Why, I ask myself, do students who demonstrate no personal interest in writing, business, or science force themselves to slog through AP English, AP Economics, or AP Biology when they could very well spend their time doing something they truly enjoy?
In all honesty, where is the resident musical prodigy going when he or she takes AP Biology despite their conviction that their calling in life is as a concert performer, not a doctor? Does it really make sense for the average high school student to push themselves to the limit with a full- or mostly-AP schedule while also insisting on a veritable goldmine of extracurricular activities and personal accomplishments? At what point, I ask, is enough enough? High school students are practically killing themselves left, right, and center for the sake of the perfect transcript-but is all that self-torture worth it?
To be frank, I have little right to complain about overachieving, high-performing, academic robots; some in my school might say that I myself am one. However, as the prospect of a full AP schedule looms ahead of me in my junior year while I feel my college chances paradoxically plummeting, I have come to increasingly question the value of the AP schedule, especially when it detracts from one's own opportunities to experience life.
Just a little something for parents to brood upon and students to keep in mind as they continue on the headlong rush towards Ivy League fame, glamour, and glory.
-nn.
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