Paul+B’s+OpEd+Article

In a world where B is the new F and people struggle to do well in school and sports, sometimes “trying your best” isn’t good enough. Our competitive capitalist society gives people a chance to move up in theory of social status and economic wealth, but in modern America, has the American Dream been lost? The poor try as they might, sometimes can barely support their families with enough food for the day. According to some of the higher people in society, they are lazy bums who don’t care enough to support themselves, let alone their families, but I believe that this is not true, and that the fact is that our world today is getting uber competitive; not only among social class, but about how you get there through education. I know I sound like a broken record, but trying your hardest isn’t enough nowadays. I am a regular teenage boy who struggles to maintain my grades. I feel that everyone including me is constantly stressed about our grades and trying to get into the top collages in America. Recently, I feel that keeping up grades and school has become so competitive that students honestly don’t care about education anymore. They don’t care at all about learning new exiting facts about our industrial period, or what 2+2 equals; they seem to only strive for the A+ which will be on their report card. The hardest part about school is that, to me, it now feels like a big competition against each other to try to get into the best collage you can, because whenever I try to relax or take a break, the overwhelming stress of the competitiveness of not “failing” in life comes flooding back into the crevices of my mind. We have basically become animals living in a “dog eat dog world.”  In addition to school, sports also suffer from the same, if not greater, need for constant competition. In order to achieve success, in sports today you must be the best because then you are able to get scholarships and are able to get the coach to actually pay attention to you. If you’re a mediocre athlete such as me, the coach recognizes you, but mainly works with the best to make them the next Olympic athletes, working with the other athletes a bit, but focusing on the top performers. Don’t get me wrong, competition can be fun and exciting, but sometimes people take it too far, and can even ruin friendships from over jealousy or being a “bad sport.” Overall, sports can bring out the fun that you want to experience, but can also turn the tables on you by becoming over competitive, which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but can also ruin relationships between friends if you’re not careful. Overall, competitiveness in the educational level and in sports can be good in small amounts to urge you to try harder, but too much can lead to a lot of stress to become the best, which is never fun to deal with.