“Be the best you can be”.  This sweet little saying is spreading lies.  “Try your hardest and you’ll succeed”.  These short adages spread a false sense of security, causing people, especially students, to feel like they don’t need to try to succeed in life.  However, the opposite is true.  Through school and home experiences, I have learned that nothing will ever be enough to reach my goal.  No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I work, success is unattainable.  High school has taught me that working long through the night and pushing myself is not enough to ever be acceptable.  It has taught me that I need to push myself to my limits and beyond to attain my goals in life.  It has taught me that wrecking myself for an assignment is the only way to succeed.  And there is a problem with that.

I am a hard working student with high expectations set by myself and by others.  I work for hours on end every night.  I get 5 hours of sleep.  I stress out over reading check quizzes.  And I am completely ok with the fact that this is unhealthy.  I am completely ok with the fact that these are the necessary actions that need to be administered in order to get the A I desire.  I do have an issue, however, with the fact that these behaviors are considered normal in order to achieve the goals that have been set for me.  There is a problem in regards with the notion that mental breakdowns are ok if they get you to your goals.  It is true that these things are normal, and are an inevitable part of high school life.  But it’s not ok for these things to be considered acceptable in order to get what I want.  The fact that having mental breakdowns and anxiety attacks has become the norm in order to achieve a goal such as an A or getting into Harvard is an issue.

These goals and expectations are so incredibly important to students that they will do whatever they have to do in order to accomplish them.  Whether that means staying up all night or rewriting an essay five times before it’s “adequate”, students today will take any insane precaution necessary in order to attain their ambitions.  This, often times, causes students to put their health and sanity lower in priority compared to getting good grades and getting into a dream college, or obtaining another, less important goal.  Not only is there a problem with the fact that students are disregarding their health for the “greater good”, but there is also an issue with the fact that no one is attempting to fix this problem.  In my high school, I see students around me who are very worked up, extremely stressed and unhealthily committed to a goal, and no tries to help.  There are no authoritative figures, no teachers, and no counselors who try to make a difference by promoting better health and more realistic goals for students.  There is a problem with this.

There is an issue with teenagers today in which they set high standards for themselves, and then will do whatever they can in order to obtain this goal.  There needs to be a solution to this.  Students should not be allowed to let their health deteriorate for an A.  Students should not be ok with mental breakdowns, if it gets them into a good college.  There needs to be change; a change in which students don’t have to accept having a breakdown in order to achieve great and positive things.  With acceptance and support, students will be able to maintain being healthy and happy, while still being able to be successful.  Though teachers can help support students and provide help when an intervention is needed, students need to do most of the work.  Teenagers need to notice when their targets are eating them away from the inside, so that they can step back and re-evaluate what is important.  They need to diagnose themselves to solve the problem, and learn how to reduce their stress by not accepting breakdowns as the only way to succeed.  Students today have allowed stress and panic attacks over grades to become normal when, in reality, it is not acceptable.