11 ms·

Paly student tells of school stress

80 points by bootload 11y ago

semisight 11y ago
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.
- ossreality 11y ago
  Yes. I did this. And then the day after graduating had an extreme realization that I had no idea why I was doing anything. I'd been on autopilot for the last 9 years. Ran myself into the ground in highschool to graduate top of the class. Killed myself in college to graduate with honors and have a job before graduating. And then I graduated and realized that the next 40 years were in front of me. I didn't know what I wanted for myself. I had "achieved it!". I had graduated and had a job that would secure me more money than I would know what to do with, but I didn't know how to make myself happy. I didn't know how to pace myself. I still don't. When I get an exciting project at work, I pour my god damn soul into it. And I love it. And then three months later I come up for air and realize that a word outside of my computer exists... and then I spend a week re-normalizing and getting to the point where I could walk outside and appreciate fresh air instead of thinking about where I needed to be in X + 10 minutes. Some of it's on me. I grew up in a high-strung household with parents that are currently having anxiety problems because retirement is in the future and they don't know "what to do". rantier part: Fuck the older generations that shit talk on millenials. I KNOW you weren't working your asses off like this in highschool and college, and I'm sick of hearing you toot your own horn because your mind is addled and you've forgotten your teen and twenties' years. I still don't know how to truly relax and be happy. A week of vacation for me translates into about 2 days of actual relaxation. The first 5 days are spent going "wait, what the hell do I do now?"
  - deadc0de 11y ago
    Being passionate and dare I say obsessive about you work is good. I fact, it's the only way to achieve good results. That's what separates hackers from people that just go to work.
    - emp_zealoth 11y ago
      There should be some balance. I do similar shit and i stay up till I absolutely have to go to bed, then I can't sleep for 2 hours, despite quite strong sleeping/calming drugs, because I'm coding/doing PCB layout/whatever in my brain still
- IndianAstronaut 11y ago
  I really do wonder if these students really achieve that much more than those who have a more balanced schedule.
- JHSheridan 11y ago
  > Students are now asked to give up their present for a chance at a good future. So... an investment?
  - xhdjejxjx 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        But you don't understand: that's what everyone else in the program is doing too.
        will_pseudonym 11y ago
        You are risking your life to keep up with the Joneses. It's not worth it.
        thephyber 11y ago
        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.
njloof 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    > 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-kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-ki... [1] http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=mathcs_honors http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... https://www.google.com/search?q=college+test+score+academic+success https://www.google.com/search?q=college+test+score+academic+...
0xdada 11y ago
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
zaken 11y ago
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)
beachstartup 11y ago
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.)
- craigyk 11y ago
  When it comes to youthful ambitions, time is the ultimate equalizer.
- lfowles 11y ago
  > 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?
Steko 11y ago
Context: cluster of suicides in Palo Alto schools Recent article in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sili... 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-pressure-schools-suicides-lead-to-soul-searching http://www.npr.org/2015/05/10/405694832/in-palo-altos-high-p... SF Magazine article in May: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-ki...
- bootload 11y ago
  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
- DanBC 11y ago
  The piss poor coverage of suicide in some of those articles is probably causing some deaths.
paulsutter 11y ago
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-losers-1410535536 http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...
- bluker 11y ago
  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.
logicx24 11y ago
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?
msohcw 11y ago
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.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  Even if the effect you describe is real (and I believe it is) the status quo is still easier under capitalism. When you are poor your incentive is to find employees who are undervalued and hire them to release the potential energy in their skills. Development of those employees takes time, but you're poor. Time is all you have. Once you have a successful business though, you have plenty of money and time is what is scarce for you. If a competitor develops your employee to extract additional value that's bad for you. If they poach your staff you have to take additional time to develop a new hire to do something the original employee was already doing. So mature businesses shift their resources to building a moat that makes it hard for competitors to do that. This is so ingrained in how we think businesses have to work that mostly we don't even notice it. But almost all jobs contain quite a lot of "moat maintenance" tasks. This is all, of course, depended on capitalism which says the management of resources should be done by those people who have capital. If resources were managed collectively, the moats wouldn't last because other people would bridge them. It's only under property law (or martial law) that a moat can even exist in the first place.
- 11y ago
NickHaflinger 11y ago
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.
ucaetano 11y ago
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.
- frame_perfect 11y ago
  As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, I thank you.
- bkjelden 11y ago
  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.
tracker1 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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'.
frame_perfect 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
  - knieveltech 11y ago
    Yeah, I really would. Source: parent.
  - jsudhams 11y ago
    Yes, Why not?, their parents were outliers in their environment and in their time. Mostly they will be worse than their children if they were to do that same now. It is simple stupidity to expect the kid to be like us. Parenting should be giving advice, support and teaching the right things. How the kid grows up is up to him/her. I for one believe that if you do everything for kid pretty much you are live their life and they don't have anything to look back and either be happy about a decision or sad and hence they never learn.
bluker 11y ago
Tl;dr Adolescence is hard. http://25iq.com/2015/11/14/charlie-munger-ama-how-does-charlie-munger-recommend-dealing-with-adversity/ http://25iq.com/2015/11/14/charlie-munger-ama-how-does-charl...
- wcrichton 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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
joshvm 11y ago
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.
spiznnx 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
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- andars 11y ago
  The issue is not about doing well in college. The pervasive mentality is that if you don't get a 4.8 weighted GPA with 12 AP courses, you will not get into an elite college, and therefore you are a failure.
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- secabeen 11y ago
  If you're looking to learn college math at any level, the Chicago Bibliography will get you there: https://github.com/ystael/chicago-ug-math-bib https://github.com/ystael/chicago-ug-math-bib
  - deleted 11y ago
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alexvr 11y ago
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.
aaron695 11y ago
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.
jdoliner 11y ago
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.
kzhahou 11y ago
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)
kzhahou 11y ago
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....
nether 11y ago
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.
epicureanideal 11y ago
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.
thingsgoby 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
ryandamm 11y ago
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.

80 points by bootload 11y ago

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.

ossreality 11y ago
Yes. I did this. And then the day after graduating had an extreme realization that I had no idea why I was doing anything. I'd been on autopilot for the last 9 years. Ran myself into the ground in highschool to graduate top of the class. Killed myself in college to graduate with honors and have a job before graduating. And then I graduated and realized that the next 40 years were in front of me. I didn't know what I wanted for myself. I had "achieved it!". I had graduated and had a job that would secure me more money than I would know what to do with, but I didn't know how to make myself happy. I didn't know how to pace myself. I still don't. When I get an exciting project at work, I pour my god damn soul into it. And I love it. And then three months later I come up for air and realize that a word outside of my computer exists... and then I spend a week re-normalizing and getting to the point where I could walk outside and appreciate fresh air instead of thinking about where I needed to be in X + 10 minutes. Some of it's on me. I grew up in a high-strung household with parents that are currently having anxiety problems because retirement is in the future and they don't know "what to do". rantier part: Fuck the older generations that shit talk on millenials. I KNOW you weren't working your asses off like this in highschool and college, and I'm sick of hearing you toot your own horn because your mind is addled and you've forgotten your teen and twenties' years. I still don't know how to truly relax and be happy. A week of vacation for me translates into about 2 days of actual relaxation. The first 5 days are spent going "wait, what the hell do I do now?"
- deadc0de 11y ago
  Being passionate and dare I say obsessive about you work is good. I fact, it's the only way to achieve good results. That's what separates hackers from people that just go to work.
  - emp_zealoth 11y ago
    There should be some balance. I do similar shit and i stay up till I absolutely have to go to bed, then I can't sleep for 2 hours, despite quite strong sleeping/calming drugs, because I'm coding/doing PCB layout/whatever in my brain still
IndianAstronaut 11y ago
I really do wonder if these students really achieve that much more than those who have a more balanced schedule.
JHSheridan 11y ago
> Students are now asked to give up their present for a chance at a good future. So... an investment?
- xhdjejxjx 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      But you don't understand: that's what everyone else in the program is doing too.
      - will_pseudonym 11y ago
        You are risking your life to keep up with the Joneses. It's not worth it.
      - thephyber 11y ago
        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.

njloof 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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-kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-ki... [1] http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=mathcs_honors http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... https://www.google.com/search?q=college+test+score+academic+success https://www.google.com/search?q=college+test+score+academic+...

0xdada 11y ago

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

zaken 11y ago

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)

beachstartup 11y ago

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.)

craigyk 11y ago
When it comes to youthful ambitions, time is the ultimate equalizer.
lfowles 11y ago
> 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?

Steko 11y ago

Context: cluster of suicides in Palo Alto schools Recent article in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sili... 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-pressure-schools-suicides-lead-to-soul-searching http://www.npr.org/2015/05/10/405694832/in-palo-altos-high-p... SF Magazine article in May: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-ki...

bootload 11y ago
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
DanBC 11y ago
The piss poor coverage of suicide in some of those articles is probably causing some deaths.

paulsutter 11y ago

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-losers-1410535536 http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...

bluker 11y ago
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.

logicx24 11y ago

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?

msohcw 11y ago

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.

erikpukinskis 11y ago
Even if the effect you describe is real (and I believe it is) the status quo is still easier under capitalism. When you are poor your incentive is to find employees who are undervalued and hire them to release the potential energy in their skills. Development of those employees takes time, but you're poor. Time is all you have. Once you have a successful business though, you have plenty of money and time is what is scarce for you. If a competitor develops your employee to extract additional value that's bad for you. If they poach your staff you have to take additional time to develop a new hire to do something the original employee was already doing. So mature businesses shift their resources to building a moat that makes it hard for competitors to do that. This is so ingrained in how we think businesses have to work that mostly we don't even notice it. But almost all jobs contain quite a lot of "moat maintenance" tasks. This is all, of course, depended on capitalism which says the management of resources should be done by those people who have capital. If resources were managed collectively, the moats wouldn't last because other people would bridge them. It's only under property law (or martial law) that a moat can even exist in the first place.
11y ago

NickHaflinger 11y ago

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.

ucaetano 11y ago

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.

frame_perfect 11y ago
As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, I thank you.
bkjelden 11y ago
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.

tracker1 11y ago

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 11y ago
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'.

frame_perfect 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
- knieveltech 11y ago
  Yeah, I really would. Source: parent.
- jsudhams 11y ago
  Yes, Why not?, their parents were outliers in their environment and in their time. Mostly they will be worse than their children if they were to do that same now. It is simple stupidity to expect the kid to be like us. Parenting should be giving advice, support and teaching the right things. How the kid grows up is up to him/her. I for one believe that if you do everything for kid pretty much you are live their life and they don't have anything to look back and either be happy about a decision or sad and hence they never learn.

bluker 11y ago

Tl;dr Adolescence is hard. http://25iq.com/2015/11/14/charlie-munger-ama-how-does-charlie-munger-recommend-dealing-with-adversity/ http://25iq.com/2015/11/14/charlie-munger-ama-how-does-charl...

wcrichton 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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

joshvm 11y ago

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.

spiznnx 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

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andars 11y ago
The issue is not about doing well in college. The pervasive mentality is that if you don't get a 4.8 weighted GPA with 12 AP courses, you will not get into an elite college, and therefore you are a failure.
- deleted 11y ago
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secabeen 11y ago
If you're looking to learn college math at any level, the Chicago Bibliography will get you there: https://github.com/ystael/chicago-ug-math-bib https://github.com/ystael/chicago-ug-math-bib
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alexvr 11y ago

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.

aaron695 11y ago

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.

jdoliner 11y ago

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.

kzhahou 11y ago

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)

kzhahou 11y ago

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....

nether 11y ago

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.

epicureanideal 11y ago

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.

thingsgoby 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

ryandamm 11y ago

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.