Whenever you hear the word “pressure,” you might think of two definitions; the science meaning or stress meaning. In this case, I’m talking about how stress and anxiety from others could result in students feeling pressure to be “perfect.”

In Barrington High School, us students are quite competitive. My friends and I, especially, because I’m the dumb friend and it doesn’t feel good. We all take honors/AP classes and compete to see who has better grades but then there’s me ending my semesters with B’s and low A’s. I know I’m not “dumb” but it sucks feeling that way around my closest friends.

At home, over FaceTime, my friends and I cry over the things that we have to do and how long everything takes. However, it’s always a little competition of its own because for whatever reason, we each want to have the most stress and pressure so that when we accomplish our work load, we can boast about doing more than the other person. It’s just not healthy.

For some kids at school they would be ridiculed at home if they ended the semester with anything below a B and that’s just not okay!. In my household, we have a rule: if either my brother or I end up having below a B on our report cards, we get some sort of bad consequence for quite a long time. Whenever I get reminded of this, I cry because I feel so pressured to do the impossible.

My parents expect me to spend the six hours that I am home after school on homework and studying. My dad always says, “Come on, there’s gotta be something else to study or read.” I absolutely hate this phrase because it feels as though I have to spend my every waking moment on school and I don’t understand why some days I just can’t have a break from the seven hours that I spend at school. I mean, c’mon, no one wants that!

Sometimes I feel like the teachers conference and decide to assign ten projects each class in a certain week. Ever since high school started, I don’t think that I have had a week without at least one test or project due. I know I’m just a freshman, but in middle school I never had to do homework and now I probably have three hours of homework every night including a full Sunday. The pressure to finish all of these summatives on time as well as doing my best on them is one crazy task.

The statistic speaks for itself; I read all these posts on social media that say students spend more time on homework than they have in previous years.

According to Christina Veiga in her article about student pressure, “During the school year, teenagers report higher levels of stress than grownups… In fact, they may be just as anxious as the typical psychiatric patient of the 1950s, according to a study from 2000. And, if anything, the pressure has only gone up since.”

In one of my classes, we had a discussion about how much pressure kids feel and what we need to do to look good for colleges and our future. We also talked about how much is at stake if we don’t do good in school now at the age where we go through puberty and when we feel the weight of the world the most.

“We live in an increasingly competitive global world. Understandably, parents are reacting. Educators and politicians are, too. Everyone wants America’s kids to keep up.” This statement made by Sigal Sharf in their article, “Childhood Anxiety From Pressure At School,” is putting the identification of educational pressure into perspective.