Guest Columnist: Brian Wallace, Economics Teacher

“What college are you going to?” “How many AP classes have you taken?” “What’s your class rank?” “Have you completed your Beta hours?” Did you get into National Honors Society?” “Did you get Hope?” “What’s your safety school?” “How many clubs or sports have you participated in?” “How many cords do you have for graduation?”

These are questions I hear every day in my class and in the halls, (and sometimes at Starbucks in the middle of the day as the weather gets warmer), from students who are trying to measure themselves and each other against the giant scoreboard that high school has become.

I have watched students cry because their class rank was 7 rather than 4. I have heard students whisper to each other “How did SHE get into (insert Ivy league school here)?”  

I have witnessed frantic club-joining as students try to pad their college resumes.

I have seen students enroll in AP classes, in which, they have no interest in an effort to bolster their academic transcripts.

I have seen kids crumble under the pressure of academic and extracurricular demands that no teenager should be asked to take on.

I have received desperate e-mails from parents and students who are terrified that every B or C puts the future of college, graduate school, and a successful career in jeopardy.

I’ve watched our school fill a room with pillows and carpet to accommodate students who simply can’t deal with the pressure, and bring puppies to the media center during exam week to help students combat their unmanageable anxiety.

How did this all happen?  When did the focus of high school shift from learning to performance; from peer socialization to peer competition; from feeling that your life was filled with limitless possibilities to feeling like you can’t possibly keep up?  

The answers to these questions could fill volumes and are likely some jumble of the following: social media, The College Board, rising tuition, parent expectations, out-of-touch teachers, graduation yard signs, standardized testing, Zell Miller, 7 points for honors and AP classes, hours of homework, cords and medals, # of letters in your Senior Post, and “13 Reasons Why.”

The problem with that list is that it’s incomplete. And that’s a problem because I probably left off 100 things that weigh on our students’ minds every day. And that means that it’s not a problem with an easy solution.  

It’s tempting as a teacher to say things like “take deep breaths” or “your life doesn’t depend on what college you go to,” but when you watch kids have actual panic attacks over whether a quiz might drop them from a 93 to a 92, you realize these platitudes are insufficient.

As parents and teachers who have the benefit of perspective and can look back on the arc of our lives, we know, (or should know), that high school rarely makes us or breaks us, but when a community perpetuates a flawed perception as a reality then all the pep talks in the world can’t make anyone feel better.

Ultimately, the only reassurance might be time and the ability to look into the past with clarity. The only comfort might lie 20 years in the future when you hold your children, go to your job in the morning, come home to your spouse, make your mortgage payment and realize your life seems to work, despite the fact that you got wait-listed at Vanderbilt, earned a C in AP Biology or were ranked outside the top 25 percent of your class.

And while I believe that the vast majority of our students will find their way just like their teachers and their parents did, I worry that their confidence is being eroded and their self-esteem is being damaged at a critical time in their lives.  

I worry that as teachers, parents and peers feed this cauldron of pressure and expectations, we are sacrificing the joy and carefree nature of youth in the name of SAT scores and college banners.

I hope I’m wrong.  

Perhaps these things are the new high school rites of passage in the way that worrying about your prom date, and whether you were going to college or getting a job after graduation was for students 40 years ago.

Perhaps, but each year, as I watch the parade of students file into the Student Center for their class rank and witness the tears, or slumped shoulders, or gasps of relief, or faces filled with despair, I wonder what went wrong and if there might be a way to recover the emotional and academic balance that seems, for many, to have been lost.