As the juniors get ready to take the dreadful SAT and the seniors fall into a dark hole of where to apply to college, one question comes into mind: Am I “smart” enough to get accepted into a prestigious university? Nowadays, a syndrome of ‘overachievism’ fills the halls of High Schools as students overload their schedules with numerous rigorous classes and get hyperly involved in extracurricular activities. In the Overachievers: the secret life of driven kids by Alexandra Robbins, the overachieving Yale graduate goes back to her high school a decade later only to discover that the mindset of students is transforming into a obsession with grades and number of AP classes, not the joy of learning and early adulthood. Not to mention the stressful
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Julie’s friends and colleagues were going through the same routine, beat yourself hard until you can not bear it, and then repeat it the next day all over again. At Wharton University, a professor critiques this book and the stories of the overachievers of which this book is written to educate. The article is opened, “Their stories allow Robbins to reflect on the stressful, hyper-scheduled lives of teens growing up in a culture that is excessively focused on achievement”(1). It does not take much time to conclude that after reading chapter 1. Those students seemed out of this world,as if they no energy deficiency despite the bad sleep and food habits they all have. Julie happened to become bald at some point. When students and especially parents put unrealistic goals in front of their eyes, they tend to forget that they and their children are human beings who have a right to breathe without thinking about college applications and their chances at their dream school. After All,have we not seen any student graduate from COS and go to a UC after? The research reasons as well,“Adolescence today, Robbins argues, is a highly professionalized experience in which one’s resume, transcript, and scores are everything, and where both the innocence and leisure traditionally associated with childhood are nowhere to be found. Noting that the competition to get into top-ranked colleges has increased enormously in recent years, Robbins shows how teens’ attempts to look good on paper have resulted in a host of disturbing trends.” Robbins is absolutely candid because even the writer of this essay had to give up parties, and family outings just so she can finish her AP coursework before she sleeps at two in the morning. Academics has become a harmful
Julie’s friends and colleagues were going through the same routine, beat yourself hard until you can not bear it, and then repeat it the next day all over again. At Wharton University, a professor critiques this book and the stories of the overachievers of which this book is written to educate. The article is opened, “Their stories allow Robbins to reflect on the stressful, hyper-scheduled lives of teens growing up in a culture that is excessively focused on achievement”(1). It does not take much time to conclude that after reading chapter 1. Those students seemed out of this world,as if they no energy deficiency despite the bad sleep and food habits they all have. Julie happened to become bald at some point. When students and especially parents put unrealistic goals in front of their eyes, they tend to forget that they and their children are human beings who have a right to breathe without thinking about college applications and their chances at their dream school. After All,have we not seen any student graduate from COS and go to a UC after? The research reasons as well,“Adolescence today, Robbins argues, is a highly professionalized experience in which one’s resume, transcript, and scores are everything, and where both the innocence and leisure traditionally associated with childhood are nowhere to be found. Noting that the competition to get into top-ranked colleges has increased enormously in recent years, Robbins shows how teens’ attempts to look good on paper have resulted in a host of disturbing trends.” Robbins is absolutely candid because even the writer of this essay had to give up parties, and family outings just so she can finish her AP coursework before she sleeps at two in the morning. Academics has become a harmful