Week 2: A stands for average :D
Faith Week 2: Does School Affect Our Identity?
Maybe it’s a surprise or not, but I have never really complained about school until middle and high school. School used to be “fun” for me. I enjoyed the mini breaks and the feeling of wind blown in my face as I bolted across the playgrounds, my voice echoing laughter that joined the union of laughter of everyone around me. There were no toxic friendships, everything was pure. There was no feeling of pressure or comparison of grades, every score was accepted among peers. The teachers were caring and engaging, allowing us to learn and flourish. It was perfect. But perfect things don’t last forever, do they?
All of a sudden, I was pushed into a new, social environment, where everything I did mattered. The friends I made determined my social stance in school. The scores I got affected the way I was viewed by my peers. The teachers had too many periods to care enough for anyone. That’s when I realized, school wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t something that kept me going, that drew me to go back everyday. It became prison-like, as if I was going in and out of different cells, no time to really take a mini-break, to run around and laugh, and every moment that was given as “break” I was bombarded with peoples’ worries and stress of schoolwork. Slowly, I started becoming like one of them, caring too much about my exterior. Caring too much about my grades, my social status, my looks. I deluded myself thinking, this is all that matters.
This leads to the article I read about the effect of pressure for good grades. It was worse than I had expected. The health center that used to be filled with relationship problems is now filled with stress and anxiety. Students’ thought their life depended on getting that high score. I do understand that school is important, offering us education and helping us learn for the future, but is it worth our life? Is school starting to engulf our identity? Is it robbing us of our identity?
Identity is the fact of being what or who a person is. It consists of many things, not just good grades and getting into a good college and so on. It would be stupid if I continued to allow my grades determine my identity, allow it to consume me until all I can do is memorize information and recite facts, as if I was a robot. But I’m not a robot, I’m human. I’m not programmed to get good grades, to do what everyone else is doing. To recognize my own individual talents that define me is a step away from allowing my grades to constantly worry and nag me. To start putting myself above school, because it’s my life, not the school’s life. To begin spending time with family then to spend that time stuck in my room studying, stressing, glued to the screen displaying my grades. It’s a step towards freedom.
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