How the Times Have Changed

Below I included two views that compare the life of a high schooler through the perspective of 

an adult (left) and a student (right).

The students in today’s society are too academically involved, which causes them to lose their ability to cherish the company of others. Their entire lives consist of school, studying, eating, and sleeping, which seems to be repeated each day, even on the weekends. I remember back in my high school years how my friends and I would hangout during the week, and obviously do things on the weekends too. However, today’s students are so academically busy that they rarely see anybody outside of the characters in their textbooks. Students need to acknowledge that there is more to life than school, in that they can focus on being with friends and maybe even going outside for once, instead of studying or sitting on their phones. Stress is an additional element that has been sparking throughout society lately. Students get too worried about school today, as they stress about an exam that is a whole week away. I remember feeling worried about a test on the actual day of it, but I was too distracted by non-academic activities to stress about it super far in advance. In all, I’m not exactly sure what changed within society because current high school students are practically a new species than that of my peers.

I find it so annoying that the adults within our society don’t understand how academics have changed from their time. The material today is clearly harder than what they learned in high school, as whenever I ask my dad for help with my math homework, he is shocked that I am learning the material he learned in college. The result of this higher level of academics is that students are unable to spend as much time as they desire with their friends because they have to complete worksheets, write essays, and study for tests. It’s not that I don’t have friends, which is something my parents have concerningly asked me before, but rather that my desire to get into a decent college trumps my desire to gossip with friends. Honestly, it’s not fair that today’s generation has to suffer so much more than those preceding. Every adult I know today is successful, whether being my parents, teachers, neighbors, or coaches, and they didn’t have to experience unreasonable amounts of stress throughout their years of high school, so why should my peers and I have to?

My point in comparing these views is that the adults of today’s generation don’t seem to acknowledge that our obsessive studying and stress come from the fact that academics have changed since they were in high school, causing our generation to endure a more heavily academic-based lifestyle than they did.