As we enter the second semester of the school year, course selection season rolls around yet again. Students begin to plan for their future, and their education beyond high school. For many, their focus shifts from their personal happiness to appeasing college admissions officers. Many continually push themselves to take the hardest classes possible, even at the expense of their mental health. Why are students sacrificing their childhoods in pursuit of academics? And, most importantly, how can students balance academic rigor with mental well-being?
Course selection is the pinnacle of future-planning pressures for high school students. As college becomes their assumed next step, many students begin prioritizing their future success over their present well-being. When students sacrifice their current happiness for their long-term goals, their mental health suffers.
Course selection puts pressure on students to have full-fledged career plans at ages as young as 15 and 16, when even adults are still figuring out their careers. To ask a 17 or 18 year old’s underdeveloped brain to decide on a single, set career path for themselves is to set them up for failure. Many students end up choosing classes that will “look good” on college applications, rather than what actually interests them.
Taking more honors and AP courses isn’t always the right choice, even if a student excels academically. Although it can be beneficial for students to challenge themselves, it can easily become harmful, leading to burnout. Kids end up doing hours of homework each night, without breaks, sacrificing time with friends and family, hobbies, and relaxation. This is when students begin to feel hopeless, as their assignments pile up and their focus shifts from enjoying their lives to just trying to keep up. School becomes a source of anxiety rather than learning.
This pressure has real consequences. Mental health struggles are impacting increasingly younger students, with part of the reason for this being the increased academic pressure put on students by parents, teachers, and even themselves. According to the Education Advisory Board, the number of students ages 12-17 with severe depression has increased over the past 20 years, from around 7% in 2005, to 20% in 2021. Additionally, 58.8% of students surveyed have reported feeling “nervous, anxious, or unable to stop worrying” in the weeks leading up to college application deadlines. As students increasingly associate their self-worth to grades and college acceptances, a simple B on a paper becomes catastrophic—in their minds, it is a symbol of complete failure and lack of self-worth.
Society needs to recognize that pushing these kids to do more in school in order to get into a good college is not the only route to success. We as a society need to redefine our idea of success. Success does not necessarily have to be obtained through college. Success should not only mean how much money one makes or what school they go to; it should include a person’s happiness. In order to reach that level of success, mental health must be prioritized.
But how can students protect their mental health while still preparing for their futures? To me, the answer is in the individual, and it begins with perspective.
Each student needs to recognize their own limits as not a weakness, but a boundary. Students must recognize that their mental health, not taking difficult classes, must be the priority. Each individual student needs to accept that academics do not define success—and neither does what college you get into. Success looks different for everyone—there is no single path to fulfillment.
High school should be a time of growth, learning, and enjoyment, not constant stress or exhaustion. At the end of the day, we must each find our own personal balance between ambition and well-being. Then, we will all have reached success, or at least my definition of it.
