Jamie+D’s+2018+OpEd+Article

The Foothill Standard: Stress, Stress and Wait...More Stress
“I'm so tired, I only got 5 hours of sleep” “There’s no way you’re as tired as me, I only got 3 plus I had a game and 2 tests to study for.”

This is the kind of conversation that can be overheard at Foothill’s campus everyday. The students, especially the AP students, have turned sleep, stress, and amount of work to do into some sort of competition where no one actually wins. This competition only drives the students to be more stressed because they are so focused on being more stressed out than their peers.

This has happened to me on multiple occasions and it often leaves you with not only an overwhelming feeling but also the feeling that if you are not as stressed as everyone else, than you must not be doing enough.

The question is, why are we all so stressed? Isn’t high school supposed to be the best year of our lives? Yet, I spend most days frantically running around the lab in Mrs. Anderson’s like a chicken with my head cut off. I think that most of this stress is only student made and perpetuated by peers. I believe that a lot of the time our sense of stress is infact a false one that is only created by the stress that circulated among peers. For example, I am a fire leader and I often hear my fire kids talking about how stressed they are because they have an essay due in a week that they have had two weeks to work on. As an AP student who doesn’t have the luxury of being aware that there is an essay the next class period, I often explain that while it may seem like a lot now, it will only get harder. When the freshman are already “stressed” about their busy lives now, when they get to junior or even sophomore year, they don’t know what to do except become more stressed.

Another thing that Foothill is notorious for is the standard that the students hold themselves to. Mrs. Kindred always jokes that when a Foothill student receives a B in a class, they might as well have gotten an F, God forbid they get a C because the world will actually cease to exist. This is such an unhealthy attitude to have because in an AP class, the only reason you should receive an A, is if you get a 5 on the exam. While there are definitely students that will get a 5 with ease but that is not the entire class. A B is a good grade that we should be proud of. When did a C stop meaning average and start meaning failure? My parents often tell me that they were B students and they were considered the smartest in their class, so how did we stray so far from this concept. I think that because Foothill AP students are often held to a higher standard even before they enter an AP class, they have always been expected to get As no matter what. This unhealthy thought process at Foothill, while it needs to end, will only continue to get worse as time goes on, so let’s say a pray for the future students of Amex.