Recently, I’ve been pondering this thought a lot: “why do people make school their whole personality?” And it made me consider some of the reasons that people end up doing it in the first place, which led me to the conclusion to that school should never ever be your whole personality. Here’s why:

My Position

I’m in a unique positon to speak on this topic, as I am still in school. I would consider myself a pretty high achieveing student. Here are my grades as of writing to prove it:

Class	Grade
AP English Language	96%
AP European History	100%
AP Chemistry	98%
AP Seminar	100%
Honors Geometry	98%
Religion III	100%
Honors Spanish III	100%

As you can see, I obviously do care about school, but its far from the only thing that I care about it.

Why people do it

Short answer: its probably becuase of trauma.

Being surrounded with those type A students pretty much my whole life, I’ve come to realize that we are all basically the same person. We all have pressure, either from ourselves, or from other people in our lives, at one point or another, to succeed in school. However, once this pressure stops, we never really stop pressuring ourselves. This leads to an untamable desire for good grades and academic validation. This is what leads people to making their academics their whole personality.

What do I mean by “making it your whole personality”?

When I say you are making school your “whole personality”, I am describing that thought process that won’t stop worrying abou grades, schoolwork, and in general, succeeding in school. . Some common signs of this type of thought process are:

• Constantly worrying about test, grades, etc
• Constant convern over college admission/standardized admissions tests (i.e. SAT, ACT, MCAT, BAR)
• Trying to do as many extracurriculars as possible to stand out
• Attemopting to be the jack of all trades
• Never ever confident in their work

Why this isnt good

School is mandatory. All kids do it. We all symopathize with each other over it. It’s the main source of stress in any child’s life. However, when you worry about it too much, it begins to suck the life out of you.

Here’s my stance:

School should never take precedence over the things in your life that you actually enjoy. This may include hobbies, sports, family, relationships, etc.

If you ever, EVER cross this line, you are doing it wrong. This is a plain and simple fact in my head.

You know, it kinda draws me back to one of my favorite TV shows of this year, Severance. Basically the premise is that this company requires its workers to sever their memories between work and personal, so that one side cannot access the other during its allotted time.

I try to apply this principle to my life. I try to keep my school concerns during school hours, and my personal concerns out of school time. It’s simple seperation of concerns.

How we can fix

The first and most important step is to literally stop caring so much. High School is a time for living, and in my view, you can’t live if you’re tied up in school work. You’ll end up sucking all the fun out of the most fun time in your life.

It’s OK. Trust me. You’re not gonna die if you get a B. Learn from your mistakes, fix it next time, and move on.

The second part to this fix is not that you’ve eliminated any excess concern for school, start focusing on things you like. For me, thats sports (specifially swimming), being with my friends, and coding. These things are what make me such a generally happy, upbeat, and high energy person so consistently. It’s becuase I make time for these things, seperate from my school concerns.

TL;DR

Stop caring so much about school, and learn to make time for yourself to do the things you enjoy. You, and everyone around you will benefit from it.

Or don’t.

-ry