It was a Friday night when my parents surprised me and took me out to dinner to catch up on how I’m doing and such. I was talking to them about a couple applications I’ve been working on, my last organic chemistry exam, and a funny story that happened to me when I was at work and in response to it all, what my Mom said has kind of stuck with me. She, who also attended GW, laughed, shook her head and said “you poor thing. We never had to do all that.” My Dad nodded vigorously in agreement.
That just sort of stuck with me. I started thinking in terms of will I ever be saying that to a kid one day? Shaking my head at the other end of the dinner table at how much harder they have to work than I did. Truthfully I sincerely hope not.
Look at it this way:
Given that every circumstance and environment is different, I’m still pretty certain that we all have that friend who takes the ridiculous classes because they’re on some insane career track. Not only do these friends absolutely crush the school life but they also likely have a job and apply to nine thousand internships and probably volunteer every week and just make you feel terrible about yourself over how they’ve had two classes on a Saturday somehow and a job interview and all you’ve accomplished today was absolutely demolishing an entire pizza on your own.
First of all, finishing a pizza is absolutely something to be proud of.
Second of all, you know they don’t do it on purpose. That’s just their work ethic, that’s just how they are! So I’m sitting here writing this article watching one of those people I just described (my roommate) clean the bathroom and take out the trash and pick up a call all at the same time and it just makes me pray to EVERYTHING that I never tell future generations that “I never had to do all that” because dear lord how much more can kids do nowadays?
It’s usually only when I come home and see my younger brother just beginning the trek through I High School I left over a year ago that I realize all of this. Why? Because they are already asking more from him than they did from me. He, as a freshman for all of two months, met with his counselor because she wanted to talk to him about his career path.
Career path.
A fourteen-year-old boy’s “career path” is still to play in the Major Leagues one hopeful day. Maybe he can get as specific as “science” and that’s because his sister is a pre-med and that’s all she talks about.
It is absurd to expect a fourteen-year-old to know what they are doing with their future. But that is exactly what I’m talking about. Too much is being expected of the young generation. Truthfully too much was expected from my generation. Being in college I feel like we’ve all just stuck to the grind and so this all feels the usual to us.
If you’re my age, stop for a moment and think about everything you’re being expected to do this year. How many organizations are you participating in right now? How many of us are in internships or pressed to find ones? How many of us stalk Gwork for jobs because money is a thing? How’s the GPA? Have you been studying enough? Thinking about grad school or a job for after college? Are you making a difference?
Literally I can’t even reread that paragraph I just wrote without having a heart attack. While this kind of stuff definitely occurred when my parents were in college, the key word my mom said was have. None of them had to do any of that. Arguably, we don’t have to do anything either! But I’ll put it this way, I would not have gotten into GW if it wasn’t for everything I was involved in and that is just a fact. Grades are just not enough anymore. Every college everywhere now expects their applicants to have above average grades, be involved in every club the school offers, have volunteered half their life and have discovered a new element while finding themselves atop Machu Picchu.
It is absurd. Kids don’t have time to be kids anymore! I feel like I’m living in some rom com where the I’m yelling out to the recent ex “when will enough be enough!”
I absolutely think that there are other ways to bring up intelligent and capable young adults other than continuously asking more and more of kids.
If school systems continue to press for more out of the generations, they aren’t going to create the perfect student. In fact, the opposite will likely occur; they’ll break.
So yeah, enough is enough.
