To be considered “successful” in Troy High School, Oakland County, Michigan, a student must have AT LEAST a 4.0 GPA, have taken a multitude of AP classes (at least the basics: certainly AP English, AP Chem or AP Bio, perhaps AP Spanish or French, probably “easy” AP Psych), and, of course, ace those standardized tests in between studying for those tests (more specifically, AT LEAST a 33 on the ACT if not much better or, if you dare take the SAT, AT LEAST a 1500)... but no one could possibly forget that academics isn’t “everything”. There’s just the extracurriculars: participating in x clubs and leading in this and that and playing y sports and competing and winning and perhaps playing a musical instrument and excel in that too… Oh and don’t forget the most crucial determiner of success: college. Is it going to be an Ivy League or out-of-state or University of Michigan or Michigan State or, god forbid, OCC or, even worse, are you not going to college at all? Well, if college is on the high schooler’s mind-- which it should be-- college applications must be filled out to provide a synopsis on his or her entire life through a couple hundred of words either they be in the form of an essay or a transcript. That is all that is supposedly “required”… but the more the better.
Freshmen year. You are plopped into this “normal” high school environment with some of the highest achieving, competitive individuals who have spent the duration of their time as teenagers being worry-warts and zombies as they work for these bright futures they’ve envisioned. You see and feel all of this tension, all of this stress, all of this pressure, all of the hardships. Then, you overhear conversations in the hallways: too many of them about scores from tests and projects and essays. So, all you hear are these destined, fixed numbers and percent which you build your expectations off of because everyone else is preoccupied with these numbers and percents and scores so they must be important for something. Throughout your high school career, these expectations might fluctuate but very little because the requirements for a happiness and success (listed above) are already predetermined and nothing you do will change them. So, you work for the entirety of the four years, juggling everything, enjoying none of school, wishing for some sort of escape, but you don’t flee and you die inside slowly and incrementally with all of this build-up stress and lack of sleep. You may cry. You may yell. You might sit in silence. You may give up for a minute or hour or a day or even a week, but you always manage to get up on your feet and continue pushing yourself to reach these “achievable” goals. Your mental health is the last thing on your mind because it is not relevant to anything and no one cares about it except for maybe a bored psychologist or therapist. This is the epitome of a Troy High student just so everything is “just as nice as [they] hoped and dreamed it would be.”
Freshmen year. You are plopped into this “normal” high school environment with some of the highest achieving, competitive individuals who have spent the duration of their time as teenagers being worry-warts and zombies as they work for these bright futures they’ve envisioned. You see and feel all of this tension, all of this stress, all of this pressure, all of the hardships. Then, you overhear conversations in the hallways: too many of them about scores from tests and projects and essays. So, all you hear are these destined, fixed numbers and percent which you build your expectations off of because everyone else is preoccupied with these numbers and percents and scores so they must be important for something. Throughout your high school career, these expectations might fluctuate but very little because the requirements for a happiness and success (listed above) are already predetermined and nothing you do will change them. So, you work for the entirety of the four years, juggling everything, enjoying none of school, wishing for some sort of escape, but you don’t flee and you die inside slowly and incrementally with all of this build-up stress and lack of sleep. You may cry. You may yell. You might sit in silence. You may give up for a minute or hour or a day or even a week, but you always manage to get up on your feet and continue pushing yourself to reach these “achievable” goals. Your mental health is the last thing on your mind because it is not relevant to anything and no one cares about it except for maybe a bored psychologist or therapist. This is the epitome of a Troy High student just so everything is “just as nice as [they] hoped and dreamed it would be.”
Woah. This was intense. Well said. We all get moments where we feel like the burden of what we have to achieve becomes way too hard to bear, but somehow we manage to push through. In the end, once out of high school and maybe college, no one really cares about all those grades and whatnot because numbers or singular letters don't define who we are. Our personalities in no way will ever be superficial enough to be labeled with one digit. It's a shame that this is the kind of vibe that Troy High can give off, but you did a nice job writing about it satirically.
ReplyDeleteThis post is sadly so true. I hate how the culture at our school has become like this and know that it will never change. The number thing is very sickening. It is sad to think about how much people judge you based on the scores and numbers you get. However, at the end of the day you are so much more than your scores, extracurriculars, and grades. I just wish some more people would understand that.
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