It’s the day of the mathematics exam—dark eye bags that seem marinated in your skin, a rushed last-minute outfit, a half-eaten breakfast, and hair that desperately needs a wash. After surviving on only four hours of sleep from studying the night before, you drag yourself into class, hoping the effort will pay off. This is the reality students across the world face in hopes of a decent grade—something that feels like it determines their worth. However, even after sacrificing sleep, time, and well-being, the result may still be a barely passing grade.
As you pause to stare over the C on your exam, you start to question if it’ll impact your life. However, you know it won’t, you can’t seem to fully grasp it. Instead, it feels like a complete roadblock to your success.
School takes up a huge amount of students’ lives, even outside the classroom. The moment one assignment is completed, another essay or project is already waiting to be finished by the end of the week, creating an endless cycle of pressure and exhaustion. Maintaining good grades can feel almost impossible, let alone earning straight A’s throughout the entire school year. This is the reality for many students across America.
Maintaining straight A’s almost seems impossible in today’s education–and many students face the pressures it comes with keeping up. Unfortunately, grades not only have become a number to determine students’ intelligence, but their sense of self-worth. This constant pressure of perfectionism will only decay the youths’ minds.
Having the constant expectations for an outstanding academic performance has ripped the joy out of learning for many students.
For many, it can also be the appreciation of having straight A’s. Whether it’s from teachers or your family, it feels good when others feel proud of you. Without the positive feedback as a motivator, it can make the situation harder to continue attempting to do well in school.
This connection between academic achievement and validation from others is only the origin of academic perfectionism that can stick with you your entire life.
If a student feels as though they are trying their absolute best and their grades aren’t reflecting it, they’ll only feel discouraged–losing the motivation to even attempt receiving a perfect grade report card. Instead, many ultimately settle for less and what’s a barely passing grade.
School is starting to become a more stressful environment instead of a place to learn. This constant feeling of keeping up and maintaining good grades will create stress and burn people out.
This compulsion to achieve such high standards takes up a vast amount of students’ time and energy every day. At the end, the student is worn out by the lack of sleep, high stress, and absence of social life. All for a reach for perfection and a shared goal for the youth to attend a good college.
Sophomore Johan Castro shared his thoughts on academic pressure and the unnecessary stress it causes.
“I honestly think that while earning straight A’s is really nice, it’s not worth the stress that students have to go through to achieve it. Of course, if you have time to really try and do this, you obviously should, but if you don’t, don’t force yourself to achieve something that will stress you physically and emotionally,” Castro said.
The only way that seems to be attainable for straight A’s is learning only what will be on the exam. After all, the mindsets of students are slowly shifting to this because it feels like that’s all that matters–even if it means throwing all the information out the other ear. Receiving an A equals the majority of your time studying and reviewing lecture slides–however nothing leads to learning outside of class. Overall, grades aren’t fully allowing students to explore their own curiosities.
Sophomore Denise Aguirre shared her thoughts on how the education system prioritizes grades over genuine understanding of the material.
“Yes, I believe that the education system has changed and has begun focusing on their students getting good grades rather than seeing if their students are actually learning the material,” Aguirre said.
This is important to note because with a fast-evolving world, especially with technology, intrinsic learners are the individuals who will keep up. However, in today’s education system, it’s difficult for students to grow those learning skills and adapt.
We can even go all the way back to elementary school–where children were accustomed to receiving a reward in return with a good report card. On the other hand, a bad one will equal a punishment. If a student were to continue with this belief, they can only risk developing a poor self-esteem and contain more stress than they can handle.
According to an article, the majority of students who have straight A’s is not due to their talent, but rather from stress and fear of failing. While in a poll, seventy-five percent believe straight A’s could be neglecting their social life and time out of school.
It’s a complete shame because academic excellence does not reflect students’ social, emotional leadership, and teamwork skills–especially through report cards.
While education is vital for social and cognitive development, education has evolved into something toxic as well as its focus shifts away from learning toward an unhealthy obsession with numbers, grades, and performance metrics.
Freshman Michelle Magana agreed with the change in the education system. Expressing her experience and comparing it to her adolescence.
“I think the education system has lost its true meaning because it used to focus more on learning and now it’s more about grades and passing classes which yes it’s important, yet students now use AI which defeats the purpose of learning,” Magana said.
Overall, everyone I’ve interviewed expressed similar views and opinions on today’s educational world. All with common patterns of overworking and high stress levels developing for a letter that seems to determine their self-worth.
However, a letter should not reflect who students are and what they have to offer.
Maguna further shared how grades fail to cover who students truly are.
“Grades often fail to measure qualities such as creativity, kindness, leadership, effort, communication skills, and determination,” Maguna said.
As we can see, even students have noticed and are aware of all the other fractures they bring to the table. However, grades do not give them the chance to showcase those qualities. I bring this up because in a world with AI evolving and becoming more of our daily lives, people say it will slowly replace us.
Although, it also seems like our current system is moving the next generation to that future. The thing separating humans and AI is that we feel and experience reality and everything life has to offer. However, if our grades don’t reflect that, how would it be acknowledged?
Ultimately, straight A’s can open doors, but they shouldn’t define a student’s value. Behind every perfect grade is exhaustion, pressure and the fear of failing. Education is meant to engage students’ curiosity and growth, however students now feel like they’re trapped in a system that measures them by numbers on a report card.
Students are far more than the score they receive, and until education recognizes that—many students will continue sacrificing their well-being to pursue perfection that was never designed to define them.
