{"id":2274,"date":"2019-12-09T21:57:22","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T21:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/?p=2274"},"modified":"2019-12-09T21:57:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T21:57:23","slug":"never-doing-enough-stress-as-a-measure-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/2019\/12\/09\/never-doing-enough-stress-as-a-measure-of-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Doing Enough: Stress as a Measure of Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Helen\u00a0Liu\u00a0(V)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a very close relationship with my parents. I\u2019m open to them about almost everything, and they encourage and support me. Ever since I can remember, they\u2019ve been drilling the importance of hard work, compassion, and virtue into my head to make me the person I am today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, almost every month, we get into the same argument. Tired from a long week of school, I decide to destress a bit over the weekend by taking a couple of extra hours of free time. My parents will notice, and tell me, \u201cYou never have time to finish your extracurriculars during the weekdays. Why not catch up now?\u201d They inevitably bring up how friends from other schools are spending six hours a day on homework. \u201cDon\u2019t you think you\u2019re too relaxed?\u201d they ask. \u201cYou\u2019re in junior year. You should be working harder than this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just my parents that have this mentality. Sometimes, when I go to bed, I\u2019m tempted to bring my laptop with me and outline that essay due in a couple of weeks. When we get school days off, I finish all my work by mid-afternoon, but end up spending the rest of the day strangely tense. Why do I have so much free time? Was there something assigned in class when I wasn\u2019t paying attention? Is there a project I can plan out? Am I too relaxed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, I\u2019m fairly happy with how my junior year is going. When I was little, I was always told to \u201cwork hard and play hard,\u201d and I think I\u2019ve found a good balance of both working and playing. I\u2019m managing my time a lot better than I have in the past, and I\u2019m finding it easier to maintain decent grades while keeping up with other parts of my life. Maybe I could put a little more time into clubs, or study a bit harder in a class or two, but overall, I\u2019m satisfied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why, then, is being \u201ctoo relaxed\u201d a bad thing? Is it lazy or irresponsible to take extra time to unwind and just mindlessly lose myself in a movie for a few hours if I\u2019ve finished all my work for the day? I could<\/em> use that time to start future assignments, but am I obligated<\/em> to? It\u2019s like there\u2019s a set bar of stress that I must be above; if I\u2019m not stressed enough<\/em>, no matter how well I\u2019m doing in school, I must work harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mindset is far from uncommon. At Pingry there\u2019s a constant pressure to get ahead. Some of us jokingly compete over who got the least amount of sleep the past night. Some of us take the hardest classes we can, even if we\u2019re not actually interested in them because we\u2019re warned of the drop in rigor on our transcripts. Since when has stress become the determining factor for success?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theoretically, there isn\u2019t really a limit to how much effort I could put into studying. I could stay up a few hours later into the night reviewing for a test in order to get that perfect score. I could decide to go over my essay a couple more times over the weekend instead of spending time with a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I did, though, what would be the point? Neglecting my happiness in order to better my chances of getting into a good university might be more \u201cproductive,\u201d but personal experience has taught me that I\u2019d end up regretting it. A few years ago, I prioritized school over my happiness and my best friends. During that time, I lost sight of why I was studying in the first place, and I don\u2019t intend on making the same mistake again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t to say that we should all stop studying hard. We should, however, be able to set achievable standards for ourselves\u2013\u2013somewhere we can stop and say, \u201cgood enough.\u201d If we\u2019re all just trying to live a happy and fulfilling life, is throwing away all of our current happiness really worth it? At what point do we stop sacrificing our present for a so-called \u201cbetter future?\u201d
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Helen\u00a0Liu\u00a0(V) I have a very close relationship with my parents. I\u2019m open to them about almost everything, and they encourage and support me. Ever since I can remember, they\u2019ve been drilling the importance of hard work, compassion, and virtue into my head to make me the person I am today. However, almost every month, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-op-ed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2279,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions\/2279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}