At the beginning of the second semester of my sophomore year of highschool, I made the decision to take AP Chemistry instead of a free period. And just like that, I was on track to have the hardest, most tiring semester I’ve ever had.
It’s not as though it wasn’t obvious to me at the time that AP Chemistry would make my schedule incredibly difficult, as I was already taking AP World History and English 10H, which is known to be one of the worst combos of classes that I could take, especially since I’m not that good at writing in the first place (a bit ironic given that I’m writing a blog post right now). Combine this with AP Calculus BC, and my schedule was already hard enough as it was. So why did I feel the need to take AP Chemistry? The answer is simple: academic pressure.
All around me, I could see my friends and other classmates getting ready to take AP Chemistry, after having taken Honors Chemistry the previous semester (at my school, the school year is split into two semesters and 4 quarters total, with a different set of classes for each semester, similar to a college schedule). I myself had also taken honors chemistry, which I did pretty well in. As such, not taking AP Chemistry, when so many of my other friends had done worse in Honors Chemistry but were still planning on taking AP Chemistry, felt as though I was wasting some potential of mine, and that taking AP Chemistry, while probably painful, would be worth it in the long run.
This case of academic pressure drove me to transfer into AP Chemistry, which I did end up doing pretty well in. However, the cost of such a decision was that I ended up dropping out of track and field to focus on academics, and even with that I was sleeping at 1-2am daily halfway through the semester.
This incredibly heavy and unhealthy workload meant that I was often working for several hours every day after school, and often many more hours during the weekends as well. As such, my life began to revolve around school, to the point that trying to relax was itself stressful, as I subconsciously felt as though I should be doing work or sleeping instead.
The result of this consistent work, work and more work meant that I ended up burning out during the final weeks of school, causing me to slack off during AP tests, which resulted with me getting a 4 on AP Computer Science Principles, which the class most related to the field of work I plan to enter. This burn out also meant that even after a month into the summer, I was unable to motivate myself into spending time on any work at all, so I was unable to study much for my SATs.
Academic pressure can occur in many different ways. You can feel pressured if your grades aren’t that great, and you can also feel pressured if your grades are high. At the end of it all, this academic pressure will rarely have a positive impact on your performance, and will most likely result in making poor choices, building even more stress and pressure to do well. As such, often times it is best to ignore what outside influences may try to impress upon you, and simply do the best that you can, in what you want to do. After all, there is only so much most people can do when it comes to each specific school subject. Of course, it is still important to do your best when it comes to something you aren’t good at, but even with a few low grades you can still end up having a good life, as long as you can show that you did your best.
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