Earlier today, I read an article about the pressure put on teenaged girls to succeed in high school, both in their studies and their social lives.
Earlier this semester, I wrote about my own struggles with depression/mental health, some of which has most likely been brought upon me by the society that we live in: the incessant pressure that I faced (and still do face) to be a high-achieving, personable, athletic, empathetic, involved individual (read: perfect).
Do I agree that teenagers live under an immense amount of academic and mental pressure? Yes, especially where I'm from, but these pressures are not the only ones that I faced in high school. My younger sister is currently a senior in high school, and most of her friends are on our school's cross country team, a team which has a reputation for excellence, whether that be winning cross-town meets, dominating state championships, or having the largest team in the district. Out of the group of maybe six of them, four of them have gotten knee or hip surgery in the last two years, and the orthopedic surgeons consistently tell them that their joints have deteriorated because of overuse, overtraining, and not allowing their bodies to recover enough between workouts. The girls are unfazed. As I was talking to one of them, two weeks after her surgery, her biggest concern was that she wasn't swimming. She's on a club swim team during the cross country off-season, and she was fearful that both of her coaches (cross country and swimming) would be unhappy that she couldn't train during the time that she was recovering from her surgery. She also is a soccer player. She pointed out that six to eight weeks is a long time to take off from sports, and she couldn't wait to get back into everything.
My sister has undergone extensive injuries (broken bones, torn MCL, concussions) with her ice skating career, to the point where the receptionist at the orthopedics office knows her face. She's been yelled at by her coaches for getting injured, and frequently throws herself back onto the ice before she's ready to, because she can't afford to miss a practice.
Excuse me, what? The coaches of the sports teams of these injured girls are getting upset that they can't participate in the same sports that injured them in the first place? And the girls are thinking that this is normal? In my experience, knee surgery was not a normal event in my circle of friends, and to have it be such a standard thing in my sister's close group of friends? Because these sports coaches are overworking their athletes, and training them to an unhealthy degree?
That's not even mentioning the hours that are required of cheerleaders, dancers, the rest of the athletes, the theater department, the show choir, and all other activities. My senior year, it was not uncommon for me to get to school before the sun came up, for a pickup choir rehearsal before school, and leave after the sun went down, as drama/show choir practices frequently kept me at school until nine or ten at night. One week, my choir director pulled us out of class for three days to do extra practices, and I brought my laptop so that when I wasn't on stage, I was writing my three papers that I had due in my academic classes. Not once, but twice I fell asleep on the floor of the dressing room during our lunch break, because it was the only time that I could take a break. I was spending 15 hour days at school, going home to a pile of homework, and getting four hours of sleep a night, if I could even manage that.
Need I remind you that all the events I'm speaking of are happening to students 18 and younger.
This needs to stop. The culture of perfection in high school so badly tarnishes people into college that I've seen people break down, emotionally, if they got a B on a test. I watched a floormate of mine relapse into her anorexia because it was the only form of control that she felt she had over her life. I live alongside girls that average 3 hours of sleep a night, every night. Girls are killing themselves to pad their resume, and to what end? We continue to derive our self-worth from external numbers, such as our weight, race times, GPAs, SAT/ACT scores, ratio of college acceptances to the number of applications, number of positions held, amount of money we're making, and more.
This is such an unhealthy habit. Society, there's something wrong about turning a blind eye to those that are drowning in the pressure to succeed. And sadly, I don't have a solution.
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