The Weekend Between Semesters

I think high school is harder for kids now than it was when I was in high school. The big difference is the student-teacher ratio. The teachers care. But when they have that many more students, something has to give. A second factor seems to be competitiveness. There seems to be more work and less forgiveness for mistakes.

As a high school Junior, Philip is now struggling through the Honors program at Hermes High School. Philip is smart, academically-inclined and has high ambitions for college. But top grades do not come to him easily. At home, he likes to be ahead on his studies. Some nights this past semester, I saw him visibly stressed and when I inquired he told me he had done all his homework but really needed to get ahead on his homework so that he would not risk falling behind. The Honors program has additional requirements including more volunteer hours which add to the sense that there is always going to be more to do so one should be ahead rather than on time.

As exams approached, Philip became even more agitated. He wanted to leave a New Year’s Eve party early because he was concerned about getting enough sleep and preparing for the coming exams in early January. It also seemed like there were an unusually large number of small assignments that needed to be completed right before exam week in addition to final tests and papers.

Philip’s stress began to spread to the family. Amelia was checking his grades online and was concerned about some missing assignments and some unusually low grades on others. While the emergence of online tools was meant to help kids manage their assignments, it often seems like they have more trouble keeping track of assignments that are posted in odd places, or at unexpected times. Amelia contacted one teacher who it turned out was happy to have Philip redo many of the missing assignments as well as ones he had not understood and therefore had earned unusually low marks. Clearly, Philip is not the only one with these challenges.

And then exam week arrived. The one nice thing about exam week was that school began an hour later for Philip. Chloe would get dropped off at school first and Philip could either sleep a little later, spend more time at the coffee shop before school or both. He normally elected for both. It proved to be a particularly long week. Philip came home disinclined to talk and he spent most of his time studying.

The weekend after exams proved to be a relief to Philip and by extension his parents. Philip seemed to become his normal self again. His exam grades came back well and he was able to sleep in without feeling guilty afterwards. We started to hear him laugh from within his room watching humorous videos online. And Philip’s sense of relief spread throughout the whole family. And perhaps most fortunately, it continued into the new semester. While I cannot say Philip won’t ratchet up his stress levels once again, especially when year-end exams hit, I do believe he has learned to manage stress better which is going to be an important life skill.