
Paly student tells of school stress - bootload
http://www.almanacnews.com/news/2015/03/26/guest-opinion-on-school-stress-students-are-gasping-for-air
======
frame_perfect
I went to Homestead High School (and have friends that went to Gunn/Paly) and
the experiences I've witnessed have been similar.

One of my friends has parents that worked at Adobe. During his junior year, he
was taking AP Calculus BC, AP Physics C E&M, AP Physics C Mechanics and AP
Computer Science. He got straight A's both semesters, and got a 5 on all of
the AP tests. I went over to his house during the summer and found that there
was a huge hole on the bottom of the door in his room. He told me it was
because his mom was so angry at him for something school related (something
trivial like getting _only_ a 2100 on the SAT) that she kicked the door in.

Another one of my friends' dad works at Intel. My friend ended up getting
accepted into UC Davis (but rejected from UCLA/Berkeley/MIT), and, while I was
in the room, his dad told him that UC Davis is for failures.

This problem has little to do with the schools themselves. It has to do with
the parents, and the reason why people come to live here in the Silicon
Valley. People don't move here to live a great life, settle down and have
kids. They come here to advance their career, and ultimately, to make money.
Here in the valley, if you don't have marketable skills, you are trash. And
the kids who grow up here know that all too well.

~~~
twblalock
On the other hand, the parents are outliers, and rose above their peers. Would
you expect them to be happy if their children were mediocre? After all, what
are genes for?

~~~
mikestew
_Would you expect them to be happy if their children were mediocre? After all,
what are genes for?_

I hope you're being sarcastic, but in case you're not, my answer is "yes, I
would expect them to be happy if their child is mediocre." It is my hope to
not have to explain why.

------
msohcw
Education in Asia, especially the main cities in the developed nations
(Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul etc. ) is pretty much exactly the same. There's
many purposes to an education, manifest and overt ones. For example, keeping
youths neatly congregated and managed in singular locations, socialisation
into specific social archetypes of value etc. We may say that an education is
about Finding Your Passion and Being An Educated Person or to Engage Civil
Society. But that's pretty much just what we're saying. Tax dollars are the
votes at hand, and capitalist society really doesn't value An Education over a
populace well-educated to obtain economically-productive jobs that produce
tangible wealth.

We want to reverse this trend (overly competitive schooling systems) as much
as we want to value philosophers and humanities scholars and artists. Enough
to say it, but not quite enough to pour copious amounts of money into it. As
students we're told to shoot for the sky. Study harder. Get straighter As.
That's best for (capitalist) society. Every human resource neatly and fully
expended. Maybe things will change when the data illustrates how people who
like their jobs or areas of study are more productive. But that's a big if.
The status quo seems easier.

~~~
rwallace
The irony is that it's actually appallingly bad for capitalist society.

That is, it was good for capitalist society in the nineteenth century when
what the economy needed was people who were literate enough to read an
instruction manual but broken enough to spend all day everyday on an assembly
line carrying out the same hand motion over and over again without going mad
from boredom.

These days, the repetitive work has mostly been automated. The value in a
modern economy is people who can think, make decisions, find creative
solutions. But that requires leisure time, play, rest. So the economy is
glutted with broken people desperate for jobs while it's hard to find a good
manager, a good programmer or a good plumber for love or money.

~~~
moonchrome
I agree that schools are doing a poor job at educating for practical
applications but most of that comes from rewarding for satisfying arbitrary
metrics and norms that don't really correlate with real world skills. Students
being motivated and competing isn't really a bad thing if they were actually
learning useful things.

Historically education-performace correlation worked because it turns out that
smart kids are generally good at most things so having higher barriers to
entry meant higher education was a good filter for general competence and
motivation.

Nowadays the "everyone gets to college" system made the filter much less
reliable but still left expectations from all those kids that entered college
that they will be treated as previously top percentile. Also it decreased the
value of college networking as now you're less likely to meet the top
percentile students of your generation.

I don't think schools were ever that good at educating for real world but they
were a good signal. Leading students to believe that just by imitating the
signal will lead to success is bound to leave a lot of kids disappointed.

------
jdoliner
I went to Ithaca High School in upstate New York which I think got this right,
at least more right than a lot of other places. The freshman and sophomore
classes were like Carolyn describes in that they had lots of homework and I
felt very overwhelmed. However as I got in to the higher level classes
homework became optional. Most people don't believe this but I actually had an
AP Calculus course with 100% optional homework, I didn't do a single
assignment the whole year. The reason our teachers gave for this was that it
was teaching us manage our learning, something that would become crucial next
year in college. Of course, this puts a huge emphasis on the test since it's
almost 100% of your grade, which is stressful too. But that felt a lot more
fair to me. Our teacher gave us concepts that he was expecting us to have
mastered by test time, great lectures on those concepts and homework
containing problems which were similar to what we'd face on the test. The rest
was up to us.

In my opinion this system really works, I was already a strong math student
coming in but this class solidified my love of it and I wound up majoring in
Math. People have a certain cynicism about topics like this, because on some
level it's a zero sum game. Everyone wants to be above average but that's
clearly not possible. I don't think you can completely remove this stress, nor
should we want to, it wouldn't be preparing you for life if we did. But we can
substantially reduce it with different teaching methods and I fail to
understand why these teaching methods are beyond considering for most high
schools.

------
tracker1
I pretty much coasted through H.S. ... There was pressure, but I mostly
ignored it and did what I wanted. Depending on how much of my grade in a given
class was testing vs. homework, which I rarely did, I would get an A/B
usually. I played varsity football two years, band a year and jr rotc for
three.

In the end, I didn't go to college, straight out of H.S. or later. I spent a
couple years doing artwork, and BBSing got me into graphics design. I fell
into programming, and now 22 years out of high school, I work as a very senior
software developer. I've dabbled in management and didn't like it. All of that
said, you don't necessarily need to overly stress out in H.S. if you are smart
and some level of self motivation towards something that works as a career.

I'm just anecdotal evidence and probably more the exception to the rule. I
never quite understood the level of stress that some teenagers seem to feel.
It always seemed to me it didn't take that much work to do well enough
academicly, and unless you're trying for a top school with a full scholarship,
there are lots of options.

~~~
rwallace
Most humans find it very hard to resist social pressure. A whole society doing
crazy things in lockstep - until the society is destroyed or otherwise comes
to grief as a whole - is unfortunately a recurring theme in history.

I've seen it said that there are now helplines for teenagers in the position
of 'I'm gay, and my crazy fundamentalist parents have kicked me out of the
house or threatened to kill me'. Maybe things are at the point where we need
helplines for teenagers in the position of 'my crazy helicopter parents are
putting so much pressure on me that I'm thinking of committing suicide just so
I don't have to go to school anymore'.

------
njloof
There was an essay sent from student to student around finals every year at my
university. It reminded us that success takes many paths. It reminded us that
for some, this may not be their path, and that was okay.

Success isn't about getting straight A's. It's about finding what you love and
being the best you can be at it. Ignore the toxic culture and find yourself.

~~~
avmich
I think you're missing the point of the article. Teenagers are under attack
which they can't handle well - including bailing out of it. This is not
particularly unique to PAUSD, AFAIK; this is systematic deficiency.

We're not talking about success here.

~~~
tinalumfoil
> Teenagers are under attack which they can't handle well

Not all teenagers give into the stress of school. My high school had students
whose reply to "Make sure you come to school on time tomorrow because if you
miss the ASVAB testing you won't be able to graduate" was "What does
graduating have to do with being a car mechanic?". My high school class also
had a student who dropped gym because taking a normal (non-AP/honors) class
would lower their weighted GPA (which was almost perfect). When I graduated I
had just as many friends go to Ivy Leagues as community college. This was all
within the same friend group.

Palo Alto High School obviously has serious problems [0], but those problems
don't apply to every school or even to students within the same school. I
don't know what the solution is (maybe cut excessive testing that doesn't
measure anything [1] to start) but it should take into account that not every
student needs to be pushed in the same direction.

[0] [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-
ki...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-kids-killing-
themselves-6270854.php)

[1]
[http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...](http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=mathcs_honors)
[https://www.google.com/search?q=college+test+score+academic+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=college+test+score+academic+success)

------
spiznnx
This article seems to blame teachers as needing more "punishments" and using
large homework workloads to teach material because they cannot. I graduated
from Gunn (the other PAUSD high school) in 2013 and it was definitely a time I
remember as a very happy and excited time of my life. I had excellent
teachers, especially in Math/Science/CS, who really connected with students
and got us excited about learning difficult topics past the point that would
be expected from a public high school. The workload was quite manageable, even
with multiple AP classes, and I always got my 8 hours of sleep. Most students
I knew never really personally felt the level of stress that is so publicized
online.

Perhaps my experience is different from the ones posted online because I had
parents that, both because our aspirations were aligned and because they were
always very supportive, let me choose what choose what I wanted to focus on in
school and after school. Perhaps its because I took mostly 'advanced' classes,
where teachers are more likely to focus their attention, and did well in them
without expending an unhealthy amount of effort. Perhaps me and others who
enjoyed Gunn were just lucky, but I have a sneaking suspicion that these
articles are written because they are easy: the alarmist pieces repeat what's
been said before and always end up quickly becoming hugely popular.

I just wanted to make that the takeaway is not that the teachers are
unqualified or need to be reprimanded; the teachers at Gunn are excellent and
very much appreciated.

~~~
ScottBurson
Yes, I think it really does come down to the parents. It is clear that many of
these parents put inordinate pressure on their kids. Glad to see that there
are exceptions. Thanks for posting your experience.

------
Steko
Context: cluster of suicides in Palo Alto schools

Recent article in the Atlantic:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-
sili...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-
valley-suicides/413140/)

An article from Vice in September:

[http://www.vice.com/read/student-
teaching-0000748-v22n9](http://www.vice.com/read/student-
teaching-0000748-v22n9)

NPR interview with a student from May:

[http://www.npr.org/2015/05/10/405694832/in-palo-altos-
high-p...](http://www.npr.org/2015/05/10/405694832/in-palo-altos-high-
pressure-schools-suicides-lead-to-soul-searching)

SF Magazine article in May:

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-
ki...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-kids-killing-
themselves-6270854.php)

~~~
bootload
There is a bigger picture happening here, something to do with ever-present
parental guidance that didn't exist in my childhood and is outlined by the
work of Kennair and Sandseter [1] and documented by Roger Hart. [0],[2],[3]

[0] "The Overprotected Kid"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605059)

[1] "The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10605272)

[2] "Interview With Roger Hart"
[http://www.licweb.com/hpcc/v4n1/roger.html](http://www.licweb.com/hpcc/v4n1/roger.html)

[3] Shorts from Roger Harts film taken in Vermont '75
([http://www.der.org/films/vermont-
kids.html](http://www.der.org/films/vermont-kids.html))

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgzZN9aM8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgzZN9aM8A)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te6wLhxm4dg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te6wLhxm4dg)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hobQ3EnHI8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hobQ3EnHI8o)

------
ucaetano
I don't want my kids to grow up in the Bay Area, period. I'll probably move to
Europe when I have them. Sure, that means some career sacrifice (and wages)
but it doesn't matter, I don't want them to grow in such an environment.

~~~
bkjelden
I'd never raise kids here either.

I overheard two coworkers talking a few months ago - one parent saying that
she didn't want to send her kids to PALY because she didn't think so much
homework and stress was necessary - and referenced the suicide epidemic that's
been occurring this year.

Another co-worker responded to her, 100% seriously, "Yea but if they survive,
they'll probably get a great job"

It was sickening.

------
zaken
Yes! This article will make a great addition to her college application!

(Joking aside, this is literally the mentality a school system like this
encourages)

------
semisight
I'm five years out from this and still remember the stress. Students are now
asked to give up their present for a chance at a good future.

~~~
JHSheridan
> Students are now asked to give up their present for a chance at a good
> future.

So... an investment?

~~~
xhdjejxjx
It's more than that, unless you consider investing your physical health part
of the deal too.

As a current mechanical engineering junior, the expectations have gotten
really quite insane. In order to graduate on time you have to be taking 15-18
credits of the hardest classes offered at university. Right now I'm in an 18
credit semester, and next I will be taking 17 credits. Currently I'm in fluid
mechanics, finite element analysis, engineering statistics, thermodynamics,
and advanced multivariable calculus.

I average about 4-5 hours of sleep. The level of stress associated with this
major is making me lose my hair at 20 years old, and I've also developed this
weird problem where I profusely vomit several times a day.

~~~
tass
You should talk to a school counsellor about the load. What is the worst that
can happen if you don't graduate on time? I'm asking because i don't actually
know...

Talk to a doctor about the other problems you're having - if it's stress
related you'll at least have some evidence to back you up if you discuss
workload with your school.

~~~
xhdjejxjx
But you don't understand: that's what everyone else in the program is doing
too.

~~~
thephyber
What does what "everyone else is doing" have to do with _your_ personal
physical and mental health?

Take an honest appraisal of what you think you can do and talk it over with
both your major counselor and a school nurse. If your body or mental health
can't handle it, take it down a notch and consider dropping a course and
retaking it the next semester/quarter.

Half of the controversy of the suicides based on parental+peer pressure and
competition is that the demands will never plateau or fall. They will continue
to rise above the abilities of more than 99% of the people who enter the
competition. There is no supply/demand curve where parents/peers and you will
magically find an equilibrium. Learn to have your own expectations,
independent of your parents and peers.

~~~
secabeen
The other thing to remember is that only a few years after you finish your
education, the specifics of it will matter little. What you show on your
resume for your first job completely swamps where you went to school, and
especially how you did there.

------
kzhahou
The kids bust their asses, all day and late into the night, and it's still not
good enough. They watch their peers get the top grades, top scores, and top
admissions.

The parents bust their asses at startups, working late and weekends in their
tiny rental, and it's not enough. They watch others their age and younger
striking it rich with their acquisitions and IPOs.

(of course, both are doing just fine, and amazingly well compared to the rest
of the world. But the toxic mentality remains)

------
epicureanideal
Suggested solution: round up all grades above 95% to 100%. Re-practicing the
same material 100 times because you only score perfectly on the practice tests
9 times out of 10 (meaning, 1 time out of 10 you get 98%) is an incredibly
inefficient use of time. Let people get 95% in each of their classes and if
they still want to overachieve, let them take an additional class. That's
still HARD but at least it's not so wasteful.

Similarly, what about university admissions "capping" the number of
extracurriculars etc. they consider? Okay, you've already got your 4.0, you're
already in a sport, you already play violin. It's great that you also have
three other activities, but we're just going to add until we get you to 100%
and stop counting. Enough with the wars between 140% and 150% overachievement.

You get what you measure. If it requires a perfect SAT score to get into
Harvard, then people are going to take hundreds of hours from their young life
that could be better spent learning something else or having a slightly
balanced life and instead spend it studying and re-studying the SAT. It also
unreasonably biases entrance against students who needed to work a little bit
rather than study 24/7.

At some point when you're measuring the top 1% the margin of error becomes
greater than the precision of the measurement. The real problem, as has been
discussed elsewhere, is that the brand name schools haven't grown to
accommodate as large of a population (by percentage) as they did in the past,
to the point that they reject thousands and thousands of students who would
have been accepted eagerly 50 years ago. In school and in life there seem to
be fewer and fewer positions near the top, that provide lifestyles that seemed
attainable not that long ago, given hard work.

------
beachstartup
from anyone out there feeling the pressure - i did only well enough in
highschool to get into a halfway decent college (good public school), and then
graduated there with a 2.0 out of guilt of wasting my parents' money. i
literally had the minimum required GPA to graduate - not a coincidence. i'm
not saying you should do this, but it's what happened, and those were the
choices i made at that (very) young age.

i'm doing just fine. people end up all over the map and it usually has very
little to do with what they did in school. i know academic overachievers who
never got anywhere in life, and total slackers who found their niche a few
years later. my co-founder is a drop-out, not because of grand ambitions but
because he just said 'fuck this' a few months into it.

the trick is to find something to do something well (and do well in), it
doesn't have to be school. it doesn't even have to be making money

(and if you follow the logic when rationalizing over-pressuring kids in
school, it always goes back to money. always.)

~~~
lfowles
> from anyone out there feeling the pressure - i did only well enough in
> highschool to get into a halfway decent college (good public school), and
> then graduated there with a 2.0 out of guilt of wasting my parents' money. i
> literally had the minimum required GPA to graduate - not a coincidence. i'm
> not saying you should do this, but it's what happened, and those were the
> choices i made at that (very) young age.

>

> i'm doing just fine. people end up all over the map and it usually has very
> little to do with what they did in school.

Absolutely. I went to a pretty dang small school in Kansas (18 in my
graduating class), which offered no AP classes and barely even had a calculus
class. Followed this up by attending a state college (almost automatic
admission for decent students) and now I have a fulfilling job, at an
established company I had never heard of, straddling the line of software and
hardware that I look forward to going to (almost) every day. I did not push
myself 10% as hard as most of the comments on this very thread, even. Life
goes on.

Now, I may not have the same opportunities available as if I had gone to an
engineering school everyone has heard of, but is that worth the cost?

------
joshvm
About the time I was doing my GCSEs (16 yrs), Oblivion was released. Revision
wasn't a priority when Tamriel was in danger. I'm still glad I spent my time
playing Morrowind and Oblivion rather than spend my evenings overanalysing
English literature.

On a more serious note, tne thing that surprised me about doing a PhD and
attending undergrad classes* was that without the pressure of exams and
homework, I listened and was interested. Far more interested than I was at
undergrad when each hour was spent scribbling down notes.

*My undergrad was in physics, my PhD is in computer vision which I knew absolutely nothing about when I started.

------
0xdada
Coming from a high school that is usually considered one of the top 10 in my
random European country, I simply cannot imagine this. Granted, this country
is one of the cyan countries in [1]. High school was easily the most fun time
of my childhood.

I feel incredibly lucky now. I'd never want to expose my child to an
environment like this.

[1] [http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/sxn.png](http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/sxn.png)

------
paulsutter
Competition is a choice. Some say it's for losers[1].

Either way, this is melodrama. Certain goals really do require sacrifices. But
everyone choses their own personal goals. I do remember being a teenager, and
I do remember that it was difficult to realize this. That doesn't make it any
less true.

[1] WSJ, "Competition is for Losers" [http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-
competition-is-for-l...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-
is-for-losers-1410535536)

~~~
bluker
Agreed. Everyone perceives the world from the tip of their own nose. Life
could be much worse. As a counter point of view, my brother went to a high
school just outside of Detroit. During his senior year the district ran out of
money, most of the teachers quit but the students still had to "attend" class.
The grad rate was < 65%. There were no after school programs or accelerators
to attend. Most students and their families are living on welfare and/or
working to help support their family. Homework is the last thing on their
mind. Public education is flawed in many ways and it's usually those who show
the most resourcefulness that survive in any scenario.

------
thingsgoby
Oh dear US citiziens...as a European reading things like this is hilarious.
Here it doesn't matter what High School you attend, you go to any university
you want because basically everyone is free and with no need to apply. Nobody
ever asked me about my HS Diploma or my university grades. In the end the only
thing that matters is what you can do/know (global truth).

~~~
nostrebored
There's also a reason why you see countless European international students in
the American higher education system. While Europe has some great
universities, many of them are lackluster. What you can do/know can be greatly
impacted by the people you're around and the people teaching you. When people
are competing for slots at places where you can network with the best and
brightest, competition will be fierce.

------
nether
Reason #368 not to have kids. Seriously what state of mind compels people to
bring new humans into the world and force them through this gauntlet? I
remember being a teenager and the experience sounds even worse today. I think
most unborn babies would just not consent to birth if they knew this was ahead
of them.

------
alexvr
I find this deeply disturbing, particularly because there has never been a
better time in recent history to NOT give a damn about how you perform in
traditional school systems, if you are unlucky or ignorant enough to be
imprisoned in one in the first place. Competitive anxiety is one thing when it
compels people to achieve amazing things, and another entirely when it clouds
judgment and makes people miserable and on edge so they can merely out-compete
the next person, even if the entire competition is largely just a contrived
and futile ego game to begin with. People should first think long and hard
about _why_ they are striving for whatever it is they are stressing over.

But the truly disturbing thing is that traditional schools still exist, and a
frightening number of people -- even some smart people! -- still consider the
system humane and somehow necessary. I sometimes can't believe that my younger
self was effectively forced to do push-ups, run laps, eat lunch in a crowded
cafeteria (that is, navigate the social landscape as someone with anxiety),
and memorize court cases, poems, and Greek column types because some older
person decided that it was good for me. Because overall it wasn't, and the
reason I managed to finish K-12 as a reasonably educated human being instead
of a sheep is that I realized the contrived nature of traditional education
very early -- like, second grade -- and placed _actual_ education (and, maybe
unfortunately, silly but outrageously fun MMORPGs) above “school for the sake
of grades”. I learned a lot from school, and even plenty from coursework, but
I can hardly imagine the superior human I might be had I been allowed to focus
on my personal interests and learn at my own pace.

School is a _really bad_ place for smart kids. It’s disgusting. For every
would-be gang member or fry cook who turns out significantly better because he
was forced to attend school, there are probably many thousands of bright young
people who would much rather be inventing something, experimenting,
productively socializing, or studying what they find interesting. If I do one
meaningful thing in my life, it will be helping to make that the norm. It’s
really a sad thing that some kids with plenty of potential are misguided into
thinking that a GPA is more important than knowledge, experience, curiosity,
and comprehension. And it’s an _atrocity_ that staggeringly gifted young
people can grow up thinking they’re poorly endowed weirdos because, instead of
memorizing their way through school, they struggle to actually understand
things since their minds refuse to take “that’s just how it works” for an
answer, and they bother to "waste time" wondering, "What if...?"

There are far more humane ways to criminally detract from the most important
years of young American lives, if that’s the goal of compulsory education.

~~~
20years
Such a great comment!

"And it's an atrocity that staggeringly gifted young people can grow up
thinking they're poorly endowed weirdos because, instead of memorizing their
way through school, they struggle to actually understand things since their
minds refuse to take “that's just how it works” for an answer, and they bother
to "waste time" wondering, "What if...?"

This is exactly how I felt through school and did poorly because of it. I see
these issues with my son too but he is excelling because I heavily encourage
his curiosity and he has been lucky enough to have some great teachers that
appreciate his obsessive need to have to know "why" or dig in deeper. I do
worry though that he won't be so lucky as he moves into high school.

"It's really a sad thing that some kids with plenty of potential are misguided
into thinking that a GPA is more important than knowledge, experience,
curiosity, and comprehension."

This is so true. Something that recently really stood out to me was the lack
of critical thinking or troubleshooting skills in kids. I discovered the lack
of this in a summer workshop I was part of. Only about 10% of the kids (ages 8
to 12) had decent critical thinking or troubleshooting skills. The rest just
wanted to be told what to do and how to do it. Why? Is it because we are so
focused on getting kids to reach certain milestones that we are not teaching
them or even encouraging critical thinking?

------
aaron695
I get what these articles are trying to imply but I'm not seeing hard figures.

Is it really worse in these locations and is it really worse than the old
days?

Poor rich kids and the poor youth of today is a meme that's decades old, I
need hard figures that this time it's different.

------
bluker
Tl;dr

Adolescence is hard.

[http://25iq.com/2015/11/14/charlie-munger-ama-how-does-
charl...](http://25iq.com/2015/11/14/charlie-munger-ama-how-does-charlie-
munger-recommend-dealing-with-adversity/)

~~~
wcrichton
Except, the article details specific conditions of the ultra-competitive
environment in Palo Alto high schools. As someone raised in Iowa, I can assure
you that this is not the universal adolescent experience.

~~~
bluker
You're completely right. And as someone raised in Detroit she will never have
to experience my environment. You or I cannot truly understand how she feels.
What is hard for her may be trivial to us and vice versa. Everything is
relative.

 _“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to
change ourselves…. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last
of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”_ \- Viktor Frankl

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NickHaflinger
It's been a long time since I was in education, but it seems to be that the
source of the stress is having to take endless exams. Something imposed from
on high on the teachers as demonstration of their competency.

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kzhahou
The author only briefly touched on this, but the attempted suicide rate is
alarmingly high in this school district. A lot of people here are making
light, but something scary is happening there.

I'll try to find a reference....

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logicx24
My experience through high school was very similar. From grades 9 to 11, I
woke up at 6 each day to take a bus to another school to take an engineering
class. I then had 7 other periods of the day, each with a 43 minute class (by
11th grade, I gave up lunch to take another class, so I had 8 consecutive
periods of class), where teachers assigned ridiculous amounts of homework and
made incredibly difficult tests to somehow test us.

In twelfth grade, I stopped having to wake up at six, but I then replaced that
with six AP classes. Somehow, I managed to do well on all the exams, but I was
always stressed, always on edge, always anxious. On top of this, I had all of
those college apps, and since I was overly ambitious, I applied to like 20
schools, almost all of whom had lengthy, frustrating supplements.

Then, of course, there were the extracurriculars, all those bullshit clubs and
activities I did to plaster on my college application, and the added pressure
of every other honors student competing for grades, classes, research
positions, internships, and leadership positions, and all the other nonsense
that seemed to matter so much back then. School would feel like a pressure
cooker, where the tension would just build and build without reprieve.

And then there were all the normal social pressures of high school. Were you
invited to parties, or were you not? Did you drink? Did you smoke? Were you
getting laid, or were you not? Who were you taking to prom/junior prom/spirit
week dance/freshman dance? Were you "cool," or were you not? This dissipated a
bit by senior year, as people matured, but the underlying tension was always
there.

I thought that March of senior year would be my happiest moment. All my
efforts, all of my sacrifices, would pay off. And they did, in a way. I got
into multiple fantastic Computer Science schools.

But that joy I thought I'd feel never materialized. I'd idealized
accomplishing something, of getting into a top university, so much, that the
actual accomplishment could never really compare. All I really felt was
emptiness, and I sinking feeling that I'd wasted a fuckload of time.

Now, here I am in college, where everything feels pretty similar. People
compete over internships instead of colleges, but nothing has really shifted.
The competition is just a lot harder. But, I'm a junior now in college, and I
think my experience here has been much better. I've learned to finally stop
giving so many fucks about everyone else, and focusing on what I want. I think
its brought me better results too.

Sometimes though, I do wonder: what's the point of all of this? Why do we
chase after prestige and money as if they're all-solving panaceas? And what am
I going to do after I graduate, get that "amazing" job I've been striving for,
and don't have any set goals to lust for? What will I do next?

~~~
xiaoma
Have you read Peter Thiel's book _Zero to One_? He talks about the problem
with pursuing tournaments, where people are competing over a fixed
opportunity. He used his own experience as a student, a student at Stanford's
law school, and then as a hopeful Supreme Court clerkship appointee. At each
level he succeeded and found only fiercer competition at the next. Finally, he
failed. He didn't get the prestigious appointment as a Supreme Court clerk.

Not long after, he left and did something almost nobody else was doing and the
result was Paypal, which made him wealthy and lead to his future as one of the
most successful VCs of our era.

Essentially, he said, "Competition is for losers. Go create something nobody
else is and build it into a defensible business (i.e. a monopoly on
something)."

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ryandamm
Weirdly enough, high school in Palo Alto sucks for the same reason recruiting
is hard.

Relevant anecdote: I had beers tonight with a friend who was going through
some strange feelings about some acqui-hire interviewing with Google. (To be
clear, Google's acquiring his company, not the other way around.) He's
brilliant, and he's got literally a couple decades of experience in
engineering, product, design, etc -- and yet he walked away not knowing why
some of the team members were acqui-hired and others were a 'pass.'

So why does Google's interview process feel like the SATs, or this girl's
description of high school? Perhaps our 'measurement' systems for 'human
quality' are really, really bad. Probably because human 'quality' isn't really
quantifiable (or even well-defined, or static under observation), definitely
because there is no clean test for such things, and because intelligence is a
slippery, poorly-defined quality, and definitely not a quantity.

High school is the worst example of this: it can be weirdly competitive, the
stakes are irrelevant/stupid (scores on standardized tests?), and everything
is scaled incorrectly.

For my own son (he's 4), I hope he just finds something he wants to do. I will
be hugely proud if he figures out what makes him happy and does it. I would
definitely have fun if he enjoyed building things, because that's something I
enjoy, and I'd love to share it with him. But I swear I'd love him just as
much if he became a lawyer. (No, HN, seriously, even a lawyer! if you have
been sued and don't have kids you wouldn't understand; I've had both.)

Now, Palo Alto is a weird case, but I grew up in Mountain View (granted, a
generation ago), and there was a little of the same competitiveness going on.
But it wasn't institutional, it was parent-driven. Get enough like-minded
parents in one spot, well, then I guess it feels like reality. But I think the
central fiction of the entire affair is that grades, top colleges, some sort
of context-free "achievement" is a first-order good. But it's not a filter for
anything that really matters... for example: empathy, thoughtfulness,
humility, etc. Or being able to create value for the world.

Or even capital-A achievement (which is only a poor proxy for value-creation).
These qualities (and others) are more important for getting something done
than pure intellect... if such a thing even exists, frankly -- I'm more
inclined to believe in domain-specific aptitude than some sort of pure 'IQ'
score, like a D&D character attribute... far too reductive to be real. Testing
well on the SAT is a reliable indicator of being good at taking standardized
tests... full stop.

And being good at interviews is 100% correlated with being good at interviews.
I can't say much beyond that.

