A Graded Life

When I go to school every day I worry about an upcoming assignment or test, it doesn't matter if I have completed the project or if I know all of the material on the test, I just stress and stress. Even when I am prepared for school and playing ping pong, pool, or foosball with my brother I still can’t focus on anything except for school. Now you might be thinking “concentrating on school is super important and if you can focus on academics what’s the problem?” Well the problem is that I feel like I have to worry about my grades all of the time, no matter what because Middle school grades help prepare for high school and those grades affect where you can go to college and that influences you job and the rest of your life. I know that at thirteen people tell us “You're in 7th grade make mistakes and learn from them.” or “Don’t be afraid to mess up.” As well intended as those words may be, if you want to be successful there are a very short and limited list of mistakes that you can make, or at least from the perspective of someone who is thirteen.

I am lucky to have extremely committed and supportive teachers at Catlin Gabel, because if I didn’t school would feel impossible on top of the fact that I am constantly worrying about grades. Yes, I do believe that grades are very important and working hard is also important because that can open new doors and create amazing and unique opportunities that may alter your life, but do you need to stress about that when you are in middle school? On average about 83% of teen stress comes from school, so that leaves only 17% for the rest of you life that you live outside of school.312726-the-growing-teen-epidemic-stress Additionally, on a 10 point scale the average stress of an adult is about 5.1 and the average stress of a teen is 5.8. American Psychological Association Survey Shows Teen Stress ...https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/02/teen-stress.aspx If you would like to read more here are two great articles that might interest you. I also value the fact that I am lucky enough to go to school and learn, so that I can one day become an active participant in our vastly developing society. I realize that “doing well in school” is a concept to help us learn and to help us to strive to do well so that when we are pushed out of the nest into the real world we can take off and have the ability to support ourselves or our family. I also know that I and many other teens like me need to focus on what we are doing right now and what is going on the world around us at this age. Once we are older we never get to have this time back and we will never learn to take our first steps, read our first book, get our first A, or be thirteen ever again. The average human lives for about 80 years, and I don’t want to spend 10 of those years that I have worrying about grades only to have to worry about college and work after I am no longer young and full of energy. That’s not to say that I don’t love school, I do, but I don’t love to worry about school when I am trying to win nationals or relaxing with my friends during summer vacation. Every day I strive to do better that the day before and to learn more that the day before, but if I am too scared of the consequences of making a mistake, how am I supposed to be the best me that I can possibly be?