Student Stress In The Overachievers By Alexandra Robbins

Michael Jordan, a legendary basketball player stated, “You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that.” That is a major issue with students today: they constantly strive and compete to be the best, which ends up stressing them out almost all the time. Schools today seem to encourage students who fill up their schedule with AP classes and unnecessary extracurricular activities, which is partly why today’s students are constantly stressed out. Schoolwork is not the only thing that stresses out many students today. There are also expectations which can be set by the student, or sometimes even the parents. In The Overachievers, Alexandra Robbins uses a plethora of statistics, examples, and analyzes the lives of several Whitman High School students in depth plus other various characters to develop the …show more content…
An example of a health problem caused by stress occurs when Julie’s hair is thinning and she learns, “stress can cause hair loss” (Robbins 2). It is understandable that this is happening to Julie because she is currently a junior, and junior year is often regarded as the most stressful year of high school. However, no matter what year it is, students should not be acquiring health problems because of school. A possible reason why so many students today suffer from health troubles like Julie’s hair loss or depression could be because school today seems to be more about simply passing than it is about learning. If schools went back to the way they were in the past, there would not be students like Ryland who, “would hide in the bathroom, where he sat on the floor, crying, shivering, and wishing he could disappear” (Robbins 59). With the examples of Ryland and Julie, Robbins has emphatically proved that the life of a student today is definitely not an easy or carefree one, because they almost always have something to worry