The school year is coming to a close, and although this is an exciting time, stress-levels around campus are visibly skyrocketing.
I speak to the students when I say this, and being one, I understand that everyone is dealing with mounting workloads consisting of tests, papers, projects, AP exams, you name it. As a result of such daunting tasks, we students can become easily prone to stressing, specifically regarding school. I, for one, can say with all integrity that I have never been more stressed about school in my life, and I know that I speak for not only myself, but for my peers as well.
Such stress evidently correlates to the grades we receive in school, and how instantly worried we can become when we begin thinking of what would happen if our grades were not as good as we had hoped or anticipated, or worse, if our grades were not in accordance with expectations set by our parents.
This ever-growing phenomenon has recently been intensified within our campus. The more people I talk too, the more apprehension and panicking I see. While school will always be, in some form, stressful and overwhelming in nature, it is important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
When we do this, we realize that this amount of weight on our shoulders only constitutes one month, and that all of high school only compounds to four years, and that the SAT is just one test. Within the greater scope of things, high school education adds up to only a mere fraction of our lives, certainly not enough to make or break a person. In fact, the truth of the matter is that our grades in high school do not define us a people, and do not define our futures in the slightest.
Take some of recent history’s greatest visionaries and innovators, many of whom who have dropped or flunked out of their education. American businessman David Murdock, for example, dropped out of high school as a freshman, working at a gas station for several years before buying his first business, which he then sold for profit. He has been repeating the process for years, and now the 95 year old man is worth a staggering 2.9 billion dollars.
Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped out of high school to live out his dream of a bodybuilding career. Now, we know him as an actor and a successful politician. Who would have thought.
Of course, I do not encourage any of our Wyverns to drop out of school, or accept a grade that they are genuinely unhappy with, or even that none of these matter; that is not my point at all. However, life is long, and high school is short in comparison.
A bad grade does not define one’s capabilities over time, it does not ruin potential careers, and it certainly should not send us into a downward spiral of stress and anxiety. It should motivate us to generate our best work, and nothing but. While this is a stressful time in our lives, our lives are long, and what becomes of us is up to us. I bring up those two individuals because according to society, based from their high school experiences, they should have never been as successful as they were. Yet, they were, and there are thousands of more examples like those out there.
Those two men prove to us that the four year experience we spend so much time stressing over, does not and will not determine who we will become.
When beginning to feel the haphazard atmosphere of school’s ending weeks, remember your strengths, what you’re passionate about, and what you love. It might appear to be relevant now, or even worth taking the time to think about. Trust me though, it will be more important.
