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Whether it is not living up to their parents standards, not getting an all Ass report card or struggling to find themselves they all endure an extremely unhealthy amount of stress. The main students who suffered through the most parental stress were AP Frank and Roland. AP Franks mother being Asian gives her a strict academic mindset. She pushes Frank so hard often times getting physical with him. She forces him to take all AP classes and does not allow him to “waste” his time being with friends or playing sports.
At times when his home life became too stressful Frank would confine in his guidance counselor and have break downs. Eventually Franks parental stress alleviated when he went off to Harvard, which allowed him to find himself through experiencing new things and people. Most of the stress Roland underwent during his junior year was due to his mother’s “never good enough” attitude towards him. Unlike AP Frank, eight AP classes IS not something Roland can handle. It is very easy for him to crumble under pressure and fall behind in his assignments.
His mother was never there for him in the right ways, instead for helping with getting back on track she would put him down by saying he “is just not smart enough to get into any college”. Roland opens up about his home life being so stressful he has cut himself and even contemplated suicide. Parents should be the ones lightening stress from their kids’ shoulders not adding to it. Academic stress is evident in each student’s lives. This type of stress is derived from a need for perfection and a large worry over their grades.
Whether it is Harvard, Stanford, Duke or Penn state each student has their top school in mind and know that their dreams rely on the numbers they earn. So much rides on a perfect report card and a high SAT test score, they will do whatever necessary is it to achieve it. Every one of them is guilty of pulling all-insights to study for tests or finish up projects. Much stress is accumulated during SAT studying. Audrey a junior spent weeks memorizing an infinite amount of SAT flash cards and placing a large amount of stress over herself just to get her results back feeling as though she could have done more and done better.
Not only do they need perfect grades and test scores they need to be active members in school clubs. They all participate in their school newspaper the “Black and Whit?’, even though it gives each of them a large amount of stress. Often times Sam and Roland neglected their schoolwork to meet newspaper deadlines. At the end of the ay no matter how many clubs they are in, how late they stayed up studying or how high they scored on their Sat it is never enough.
Despite all of them being so passionate about school and spending much of their time improving their academic career’s they also battled with the stress of their own social lives. Taylor a senior, spent most of her high school years struggling with where exactly she fits in. Although she was perceived as the “popular girl” she considered herself more than the people she was expected to hang out with. She was smart and felt pressured to distinguish herself. Not really blending in ell with the “smarter crowd” she found herself floating in the middle with nobody to call close friends.
Another student who went through stress full social issues was Audrey who never felt good enough for herself. She often gave into peer pressure by drinking and partying with kids she knew she was better than but was just trying to make her stress disappear. All in all every one of them has struggled socially by trying to find where they belong and who they are meant to be. Being a teenager going through high school, it is difficult to not stress about social issues because in that moment it feels like it s the end of the world.
Alexandra Robbins developed student stress as a key theme of The Overachievers: the secret life of driven kids. Throughout the book she uses examples of the stress each student goes through caused by their parents, academics and social lives. Even though each student does very well in school and seems like they have nothing to stress about, they all have their hidden problems that bring them stress. Hopefully the amount of time they spent on stressing will pay off in the future when they complete school and figure out where they are supposed to be.