Yostivanich

The Over­achiev­ers is a won­der­ful book that I have finally read after see­ing the author of the book on an episode of The Col­bert Report (unknown which episode though it was a while back, some­time in the sum­mer of 06 if I recall cor­rectly). The main theme of the book is over­achiev­ers in Amer­ica specif­i­cally those in high school as they are try­ing to get into the col­lege of their choice, or rather their parent’s choice or the best school in the US. This is the prob­lem that the book focuses on, not so much that stu­dents shouldn’t strive to excel, no per­son in their right mind would say such a thing, how­ever the chil­dren depicted in this book are chil­dren so stressed out and with no social life for the major­ity of these chil­dren. I would rec­om­mend read­ing this book for any­one who has ever been stressed out with classes or know of some­one who rou­tinely stressed out over classes.

This book touched a per­sonal note in myself for sev­eral rea­sons. The first is that while I myself have never been one to really worry about classes, cer­tainly in high school I did any­thing but worry about classes. How­ever in col­lege I find myself wor­ry­ing about classes more and let­ting go of my social life in order to work more in classes even though it nec­es­sar­ily won’t make a real dif­fer­ence. This book has taught me some­thing that I came to real­ize this past semes­ter at school, I don’t care. I do care about school, I do care about my grades, I do care about achiev­ing and cer­tainly doing the best that I can, how­ever I do not care so much to jeop­ar­dize my health, friend­ships, san­ity, or my gen­eral social life just to try and do some what bet­ter in a class. I desire to make excel­lent grades, I desire to shine in my classes, but if I don’t or can’t, I won’t stress out over this, espe­cially if stress won’t allow me to achieve higher grades or write bet­ter essays.

This book hits another per­sonal note, my ex-girlfriend could have very eas­ily have been one of the peo­ple depicted in this book. My ex would rou­tinely come and ask me for help on projects, stressed out wor­ried about fail­ing the project or not hav­ing enough time to com­plete this assign­ment and this assign­ment. Which is fine that she would ask me for help, I enjoyed help­ing and would rou­tinely put off some project of my own to help her on a project, how­ever the kicker is when ask­ing her how the project turned out – the project that she was so stressed over wouldn’t be due for sev­eral weeks. The first night that she had the assign­ment she would be stressed out over the project. There are many more sto­ries that would revival a woman who dri­ven, yes, intel­li­gent, very much so, but com­pletely stressed out over assign­ments that she had no rea­son to stress over, most assuredly yes. I see this in myself from time to time, I see this in my ex, I see this in more and more and my friends every day. I also see those peo­ple who burn out under the stress or given in com­pletely and rather than achiev­ing , which they very eas­ily could, fail day in and day out because they don’t care any longer or can’t care.

I plan on writ­ing in a later post, what I feel America’s edu­ca­tions sys­tems should empha­size, ways to fix our reliance on tests and hope­fully ways that will reduce the stress in America’s over­achiev­ers, so that Amer­ica can have a qual­ity edu­ca­tion sys­tem that teaches at all lev­els of our stu­dents, not just the geniuses or the over­achiev­ers, but the aver­age stu­dents, the stu­dents who need the most help and every­thing in between.

Edu­ca­tion should teach our chil­dren – not teach a test, Edu­ca­tion should pro­voke cre­ation – not pro­voke dread.