Mental Health + School Part 2

Getting bad grades for a student who has always considered themselves academically intelligent has a major negative impact on said student’s self-esteem and self-efficacy. I myself have felt the impact of such an experience. I have been a straight-A student my entire life, even counting elementary school. However, junior year, taking 5 AP classes, following a year online with the pandemic, brought upon a whole level of academic challenge that I was unaccustomed to. I got my first ever B in the hardest class I’ve ever taken, AP Calculus. Getting a B might not be the end of the world for most, and it shouldn’t be, but I couldn’t help myself from thinking that way. The standards imposed upon students by society, as well as by themselves, have reached a new high due to the competitive climate prevalent within the US, and it is simply not attainable or manageable for many students to live without this constant feeling of failure. Many students’ self-worth and the internalized idea of what makes them a person of value is warped so that they believe their value as a person is dependent on their academic success. Society has made it so that we perceive that nothing short of perfection is needed of us in order to succeed in life, this falsity fueling so many efforts from students to achieve academic perfection. Along with this comes the truth that comparison has taken root in so much of young people's lives, from GPAs to other standardized test scores, to social status, something made even more accessible by social media, and college admission is yet another harsh form of comparison that strips all the hard work and accomplishments accumulated by a single student down to a single rejection or acceptance.