Over the past few years, there has been an idea that shapes the basis of what colleges are looking for: a truly impressive person who has achieved incredible success that is bounds and leaps ahead of their peers. Students joke about how they need to create a cure for cancer, build houses in an underdeveloped country, or win a Nobel Peace Prize. However, underneath those surface-level jokes, there is a fear that they won’t get anywhere with their efforts.
Students can end up overexerting themselves in order to impress selective colleges. This type of pressure is even more heavily weighed on those who live in academically competitive regions like Northern Virginia. However, many students fail to recognize that and end up being trapped in this mindset of “my grades improve my entire self worth.”
According to many counselors and students, this type of mindset is not true at all and incredibly unhealthy for a student. That is why students need to learn how to overcome this type of mindset and escape from it.
Grace Kim, a counselor at Centreville High School, provides advice for students with this mindset and the best way to overcome it.
“There’s some things we can’t overcome ourselves. When you find that community of people around you who can support you, you can connect really easily. Sharing those same struggles as a community is something really important students should know.”
Kim shares another piece of advice for students who truly believe that a one time mishap means automatic failure.
“Students, or really anyone who has that kind of mindset have these high expectations where sometimes you might not be able to achieve, and that is okay. Because one failure does not count for everything else for one person.”
A current senior at Centreville High School, Alva Paz, also shares advice on how she dealt with some of the most stressful challenges of her high school career.
“I experienced both sophomore slump and senioritis. But for sophomore slump, I didn’t really overcome it. I just let myself be focused on getting my grades up at the end of the quarter and giving myself breaks as I go.” Paz explains.
“Some advice I’d give to rising juniors is do not take all of those APs unless you feel like you need them for your future. It is not as important. Just because there’s people around you with 4s and 5s [on AP tests] doesn’t make you any less of a human. Make sure you know a balance between school life and your actual life outside of school.”
An important piece of advice that both school counselors and students who have overcome burnout both say that students should know, especially those who are stressed in a region who highly values academic performance, is that a one time failure doesn’t mean they have failed entirely. In order to perform at the best level, students should not get trapped in a mindset where their grades reflect their self-worth, or that they matter more than their own wellbeing. This is because that mindset is detrimental to a student’s mental health and makes them less motivated to achieve their goals.
In the end, four short years in high school does not reflect the type of person a student will be in the future. Not everyone has the same route as going to school and making excellent grades and becoming a successful person. It is okay to stop and breathe for a moment, then move on.
