In February of 2024, we released our fifth Open Call: Using art, letters, stories, and poetry, tell us: how might we create healthy spaces and places for all? The following is a letter submission we received from this open call.
“This letter presents teenagers’ daily sacrifices for uncertain future professional success. High school students are in an unsustainable school and societal system that compromises their mental and physical well-being. Why has high school been rebranded as pre-college. This letter seeks to illuminate high school as a space that requires examination and reinvention to be a healthy, balanced place.”
Laurel Aronian
“High School aka Pre-College”
We go to bed late, wake up early, skip lunch, work over holidays. Though we’re in high
school today, most of us are compulsively planning for tomorrow. We’ve been convinced that
we have to forgo the here and now to reach an elite college and a high-powered career.
During this past summer, at a chess tournament in California, I met a top-ranked high
school junior. Every morning, he wakes up at 5 am to study chess. During our conversation, he
brought up the difference between drive and goal. “Everyone can have goals,” he said, “but you
must have drive to achieve them.” I was inspired by his dedication. Yet just as quickly, he began
to complain that he was terribly overstretched with his academic, extracurricular, and college
prep demands.
How can we enjoy high school, I wonder, while still endeavoring toward conventional
measures of success? Is this even possible?
During a chess game, a player must exist solely in the moment and not let their mind
stray. In a recent article, Woman Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade addressed a common
misperception about the game, explaining, “It’s an old cliché that the best players plot long
lines of future moves.” She emphasized that, in actuality, the most crucial position is the one
currently on the board. Like chess players projecting strategy, if we as high schoolers spend all
our time planning for the future, odds are we’ll miss the winning move.
Indeed, it seems high schoolers are trapped in a system where we must deny ourselves
for the sake of a future promise. Rather than our own volition pushing us, the machine
surrounding us dictates this narrative.
Fortunately, some positive changes have been incorporated into schools over the last
decade. For instance, many now have later start times, optional standardized testing, more
support staff, and increased recognition of different forms of achievement. Yet the future-
based outlook forced upon high schoolers is not an issue isolated to single schools. Rather, it’s a
collective problem about what our society chooses to value. The unspoken rules of success are
forced upon children as young as third graders, who sometimes spend over 10 hours a year
test-taking. (NY Times)
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that high schoolers should neglect their tomorrows and
simply goof off all the time. With my whole life ahead of me, I remain committed to my studies
and interests. However, stakeholders need to come together to create a sustainable schedule
that allows all teens to thrive. After all, being in the present is a gift. As my grandmother often
says, quoting Eleanor Roosevelt: “Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it
The Present.”
Works Cited:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/education/09nowhere.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-chess/2020/11/20/529fb63a-
2a79-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html
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