People have always told me that I need to enjoy high school while it lasts, that it will be one of the best parts of my life. No offense, but those are very low expectations for what I plan on doing with the rest of my life, and also, how can anyone be expected to enjoy high school when it feels like we’re being suffocated by the expectations everyone has for us? 

As a person that dedicates their time to trying to pass high school with a good reputation and an attractive transcript, I know there are a lot of kids who feel the same way. I also know all the things we sacrifice to try to uphold the expectations everyone has for us. We give our energy to being good at whatever we signed up for. If we’re doing well, we’re expected to keep it up, but if we mess up in the smallest way, we’re made to think it’s an irreparable mistake. 

Obviously, everyone has different views of school and opinions about whether or not passing is a big deal for them. A lot of people have this “I don’t care” mentality about passing. I know so many people who have completely given up on improving their grades because they don’t think they can do the work to be better. They don’t do one assignment, and that one assignment becomes three, and it keeps going until they’re drowning in missing work. I understand that teachers want kids to take responsibility for not doing their work and it is a students’ fault if they choose not to, but it shouldn’t have to come to that point, should it? 

I’m a teenager and I know other teenagers are always going through things that may have nothing to do with school, but can still affect their performance. We are expected to put everything aside and focus on school, no matter what, but how can we do that when these things take over our lives? Students in sports are counted on by their parents, coaches, and teammates to do well, but if an injury or a loss happens, it can deeply affect their mental state. For kids who aren’t in sports, there can be home or social life problems affecting them that they aren’t comfortable with talking about. The drama between their friends or even just the feeling of not being able to achieve their parents’ standards can make someone feel like they can’t do anything else. 

When a kid feels like what they’re doing isn’t enough, they give up. This can lead to depression or anxiety because everyone is pressuring them to do something when they feel like they can’t do anything. It’s an endless downward spiral that goes deeper as everyone is telling us what we should be doing and how what we’re doing means nothing if we aren’t doing well in school. Even if adults think challenging students might make them work harder, presenting more challenges to a kid who is already struggling in every other aspect of their life just makes everything more difficult than it has to be. 

Because of all the things students go through, I feel like we need to have some kind of support system for students. It can be an anonymous line or something that lets kids know there are people there for them who want to help. I know we already have counselors, but kids are usually uncomfortable with telling adults about what they’re going through because they’re scared of them not understanding. To eliminate that issue, it could be run by students or a few adults students trust. 

Another solution would be for teachers to make more engaging work that students can understand easily or make it so turning in late work doesn’t dictate whether or not a student passes. It might even help to make it so that wrong answers on homework or classwork don’t affect a student’s grades because once a kid thinks they can’t do it correctly, they’re going to want to give up. Assignments are made to help kids learn, but if they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re going to cheat to get the right answer, which totally eliminates the purpose of the work. If they aren’t afraid of being deducted points for being wrong, they won’t have to worry about being corrected and learning from those mistakes. I don’t think teachers have to make it easier for kids to stop doing their work, they just have to make their students feel motivated and capable of doing it. 

We’re still learning, and if adults want us to improve, we need to be given room and time to grow without the expectation of being perfect.