High achieving students face the most stress during the end of the quarter

The semester has come to a close. Students across the school district are worried about their precarious grades, hoping to push those 79 and 89 percents into the more acceptable A and B ranges. Midterm exams, now finished, may either help students by getting them the few percentage points they need to succeed, or backfire by destroying students’ grades right along with their will to survive.

Among the many types of students at midterms (the worrier who can’t bring his or herself to study, the classmate who spends their entire week at Starbucks with papers splayed in front of them, the student who accepts their fate -- you know these students and many more) which group has it the worst?

The truth is, AP students and consistently high achievers have the most stress during midterm week. Not only are the classes harder and the material that was covered more plentiful, but there is also the burden of high expectations placed on our shoulders that is not necessarily levied on other students.

Any teen who has been successful from a young age would agree: not only are good grades expected of us because we’re “smart”, many AP students also have an intense fear of failure that rears its ugly head come test-taking time.

With these pressures bearing down on us, it can be disheartening to see others being praised for the mediocre.

Oftentimes, those students without exemplary records are praised for their hard work, whereas many honors and AP pupils are told that their work wasn’t valid, that they’re succeeding solely because of the genetic lottery that granted them the ability to do well in school.

Is this entirely fair? Are students in honors classes succeeding only because they’re “smart”? Are they lazily getting through their classes without studying because they don’t have to?

Perhaps for some, this is true. But the majority of students in advanced classes actually put an effort into their school career, work hard to become the top students at the school. These suppositions that students who are “intelligent” don’t work hard is a myth, one that can be hurtful to many of us who already feel beaten down by the workload we face.

In conclusion, people, in general, need to be more sensitive to the wants, needs, and efforts of students of all types and classes; just because we’re in AP, honors, or even college prep courses, this does not mean that we students are lazily coasting through school.

Students are already under a lot of stress, and we don’t need this compounded by expectations or myths of our lack of hard work. If others would accept that our effort actually means something, perhaps we would be more likely to succeed and less likely to break down at the end of the semester.