MY TURN - IS THIS WHAT LIFE’S ABOUT?
I’m pushing myself so hard to get into a ‘good’ college there’s no time to sleep or have fun

By Elizabeth Shaw

My alarm starts to ring at 6:30 A.M. In a few minutes I’m awake enough to find the OFF switch. After a few more moments hiding under the blankets, I slide out of bed and into the bathroom. Most mornings I look into the mirror and see puffy eyes and colorless cheeks. As I wash my face, I promise that I will get more sleep, but I know I’ll be up late again tonight.

I get dressed and gather my books together. When I’m lucky, I grab a quick breakfast before rushing out the door for my 45-minute commute. During the day I fly from one class to the next, using my spare time to finish my homework. In my classes I labor through quizzes, tests, labs, lectures, presentations and projects. Can I help it if I catch a nap in a class or two?

Once the school day is done, I’m off to a practice, club or volunteer organization. Sometimes these extracurricular activities are fun, but they always take a lot of time and effort. It’s 7 or 8 o’clock before I get home at night. After 12 hours of running around, I still don’t have time to unwind. I wolf down dinner, usually microwaved soup or cold cereal, by myself as my family has already eaten. Then I stagger off to complete my day with more studying.

There’s no feeling quite like sitting down at 8 o’clock at night to start four hours of homework. I don’t pick my favorite or the easiest assignment to do first anymore. I start with the work that will be collected and graded for content. Then, as I approach exhaustion, I tackle the assignments that just have to be completed. Forget about understanding; I’ll figure out the material before I take the test. For now, I just need to finish so I can go to bed. When midnight chimes and I’m face down in a textbook at my desk, I make one last attempt at some assignments and then call it quits. I drag myself off to the shower, then I crash into bed for a few hours of rest before beginning again.

This cycle continues week after week, broken only by weekends full of homework and chores. I don’t mean to overdramatize. I don’t have the most hectic schedule or the most work. Some of my friends get up at 4 a.m. to go to swim practice and then attend a full day of school. Somehow, they have the energy for another practice in the afternoon before starting their homework. Others are taking so many advanced courses that they dream of nights with only a few hours of homework. Why do we do this to ourselves?

We’re not addicted to stress and not all of us are overachievers. The numerous teens who push themselves academically have their own personal justifications, but nearly every high-school student who works into the early morning hours is after one thing: acceptance to a "good" college.

Pressure to attend a prestigious university comes from everywhere. School administrators, guidance counselors and parents make it seem as if my life will be over unless I get into a good college. If I want to get a decent job, make money and generally succeed in having a happy life, I’d better attend an illustrious school. As a junior in high school, I feel I’m being drowned by college information. A year ago the SATs and "Early Action" were concepts and vague terms that had little to do with me. Now they’re part of my daily vocabulary. TV news has stories about competition for college or how expensive it is. My home is bombarded by mailed brochures on special programs and schools. Everywhere I turn, someone is shoving colleges into my face.

These messages about college also cause a panic in parents. My mother has become obsessed with the progress of my as-yet-unwritten college application. She questions how good anything I do will look to colleges. Is it better for me to join the crew team or tutor elementary-school kids? Can I do both? Recently, my mom and I were looking over the application to Stanford University, where I’d like to apply. There was space on the form to fill out information on independent research or on special awards. Realizing that I had no laboratory experience or special awards I sighed and admitted to myself that I needed to look at other schools. My mother, never a quitter, began madly making plans. "What about that Westinghouse project? Could you do something with that? And this summer, you can do an internship then." I objected and said that I wanted to relax this summer. She shocked me with the intensity of her reply: "You had fun last summer. You can’t do that again this year."

When I talk to my friends, they tell me about similar conversations in their homes. They’re being shipped off on college tours or enrolled in classes to raise their SAT scores a few more points. Yet as much as we complain about our parents, we are equally obsessed. We try to do every after-school activity we can while still getting perfect grades. We try to live up to impossible levels of perfection in order to appease the unseen gods in the college admissions offices.

But what happens if, in spite of all my efforts, I am not accepted by any well-known school? In talking with adults, I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter what college you attend. People often end up pursuing careers completely different from what they studied in school. More than not attending a good school, adults seem to regret not enjoying high school for what it was — the last years of adolescence. When I look at my classmates, I see people who sometimes worry too much about achievements they can list. There is plenty of time to work as an adult, but childhood is short. Overworking as teenagers might get us into good colleges, but what sort of memories will it make?

One night recently, I decided for once to get enough sleep. I skipped the organizational meeting for crew (I’m cox in a varsity eight) and headed to a park with my friends. Then I went home and had dinner with my family and talked to them about what was happening in their lives. Early in the evening, I got into bed for a long night’s rest, not even bothering to start my homework. I realize I did nothing "productive" — nothing that would help my GPA or fill in a blank on some application. But I know that I lived, and I know that is more important.

SHAW, 16, lives in Alexandria, Va.