Academic Stress
Growing up, I had always been put with the group of students who managed to grasp the concepts quickest. In third grade I was put into a program called REACH that was the start of the long process of being an honors student. The school put an emphasis on competition for the eight of us that were selected for REACH. We competed with each other and the two other elementary schools REACH programs with rankings for schools and students. We were pushed to achieve in random subjects that did not necessarily have any connection. One week we would be working on guessing which way water would flow and the next trying to break a code. I now understand that the idea was to teach critical thinking skills, but at the time it made no sense.
After REACH came middle school honors programs. All three Reach groups came together for the first time. Up to that point all of these students had been our opponents. We were always told that we needed to learn these new things to stay ahead of the other groups. This was a theme that permeated my entire school experience. There was always someone else that was better, someone that I needed to catch up to and beat. Every year people were unable to make it to the next level in math or some other subject and fell behind. We were all very competitive and were incredibly worried that we would be the one who would not make it next year. The initial group of around 40 students was cut down to 5 by senior year. None of the other REACH participants from my elementary school had made it to that point with me.
Although the stress from this system never caused me any mental illness, I saw several people that I was friends with get dropped from the program and how it affected them personally. After tying self-worth to the program, it was very hard for many people to not be able to get to the next level. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to not make it. Losing the competition that had defined my life for so long would have been devastating. The emphasis on competition that was instilled through REACH is still a large part of my life and I often find myself evaluating people by their strengths and grades as opposed to their personality. I sometimes wonder if there would have been a better way for everyone in the program to learn without all of the stress and competition that was such a large part of our lives.