Many individuals, including myself, have confronted challenges that leave a large imprints in our lives. Whether or not these challenges are more strenuous and burdensome than others, almost all of the complications that we as humans face mold the aspects of who we are. Our response to these obstacles ultimately characterizes us as either ambitious or discouraged. It is easy to slip into such a dismayed mindset after being bombarded with said obstacles. Those who do not respond well to the problems that are occurring in their lives often become pessimistic individuals who have lost sight of what life is truly about.
Life is an awe-inspiring concept that can never be truly defined with words. It is what we do throughout our time that illustrates its definition. As a high school student, I can honestly state that the majority of my life has been spent worrying about school and being anxious if whether or not I will have a successful and happy future. Over the years my mind has come to believe that I will never acquire a fortunate future if I do not get good enough grades.
This conflict that has been occurring within me has made me question the reasons as to why I was placed on this Earth and has helped me to push myself to find these reasons. Entering high school, I had no true understanding of what exactly lied ahead of me. I had the typical mindset of any other freshman; curious, excited, and most certainly nervous. At this time, I did not feel obligated to stress over school since I still had three years to go until I would actually need to start worrying about my future. My grades were decent my freshmen year, which caused me to want to begin to push myself a little bit more.
I decided to take more advanced and honor classes my sophomore year just to see how far I could go before pushing myself past my limit. This was the year when I finally began to feel the academic weight. I attempted to ignore the negative effects all of this work was condoning upon me and push myself to accomplish more. I constantly desired to become the amazing student that my older sister was when she was in high school. She ran on the high school’s Cross Country and Track team all while maintaining a 98-99 average.
I felt as though I had to follow in her steps or else I would be considered the less skillful child of the two. This image of what I felt I had to become drove me into the deep end and caused me to lose the strands of sanity that I had left. As I progressed throughout sophomore year, I felt as though an aspect of me changed. I found it difficult to have carefree and still moments without finding something to worry about. My life had become entirely devoted to school and to the idea that I will never truly have a successful future if I do not meet the required grades.
I was slowly allowing numbers to define myself as an individual. I finished my sophomore year content with my grades and was ready to take on junior year. It is unfathomable how quickly time passes on until it is almost your last year of high school. Junior year was most certainly the most stressful year out of them all. This was the year where I truly figured out which people I had let into my life were meant to stay. The amount of work and stress that was placed upon me consumed my time and left me exhausted and impatient.
There were points where I felt as if I were going to break, but now I can honestly say that I made it past the struggles that I almost let define me as a person. Striving to become the best student that one can be is not such a bad thing, but there are specific limits that everyone has that should not be crossed. It is far too easy to lose oneself in such a demanding system of forced education in which bends children’s minds to think grades are the only aspects that will accelerate them into a bright and prosperous future.
During the teenage years, it is important for young adults to recognize complications but respond to them in a healthy way. Constantly worrying about the future is not a valuable and effective way to keep oneself moving forward. This is a time to find ourselves and determine the best way to live our lives. Each individual has their own unique definition of what life is, so the complications that are faced should not leave a permanent negative dent on this definition.
