School: Ridiculous Expectations

[Captain Verd]

Yeah, here's a hint: If you can't handle real college, go to community college. If you can't handle community college, work retail forever. If you can't handle that, kill yourself.

[Vosi]

Don't panic. Pressure is only unhealthy if you take it to heart or are repeatedly violated with it.

Add-on

[arcky]

I have never worked this hard in my entire life. I am a design major! Not premed, or a law student.

However, I am glad they are working me hard. I am in a University with a good reputation. I am paying a crapload of money and I am getting my money's worth... for the most part.

Wouldn't you be pissed if your money was paying for an education you could have gotten just from buying the text books?

[RPJ]

Humans don't like to learn if they don't see a inmeadiate use in the knowledge.

School is extremelly unefficient. But if it where completelly perfect everyone would learn everything perfectly and everyone would go to university and have a degree.

Then who is going to do the dirty jobs that nobody wants to do?

If you pay them more to do the dirty jobs then whats the point of school?

Until we have robots doing all the jobs except reasearch school will HAVE to be the unefficient institution it already is.

But of course, robotizing all those jobs isn't PROFITABLE. Capitalism i guess...

[lili of the lamplight]

Miss Evalyn

That said, competition within classes on a curve can still be very demanding and unrealistic.
(For example, I finished with 88% in an economics course last term. My final grade was a B.)

You're going to have to explain how that is unrealistic. In most courses I've taken, a B has been any grade falling between 80 and 89.4 (or sometimes 89.9) percent. You aren't entitled to an A.

[Clandestinus]

I agree that standards are a bit high. The things you have to do just to get into a good school now are beyond ridiculous.
There are other factors involved in college or school in general to make students depressed. There's the social atmosphere, financial issues and the massive amount of debt owed after getting financial aid, living on your own, things like that. The workload is a contributing factors and is definitely stressful, but not a main cause of suicidal tendencies.

[Daralea]

Face it. College/University is where people go to get their dreams killed.

[Vosi]

Daralea

Face it. College/University is where people go to get their dreams killed.

Is this really so for average people? I see it as just an extension of the monotony of HS.

[DearSX]

Depression in anger turned in on oneself. So students are really taking out their anger on themselves ie. getting depressed. Why? Because students feel/think/see themselves as losers and/or failures and/or not good enough ie. ashamed. Society, friends, and/or parents are shamming to students. A student even shames him/herself into depression. Suicide seems like an appropriate response to those that feel they don't have an existence worth living because they are just not good enough ie. shameful, ie. mistakes. Society teaches us to put down and hold the "losers and "bad" peopple" responsible for a messed up life. When we focus on ourselves as the shameful, we take things out on ourselves, often unconsciously.

I was suicidal in high school and had a very painful time, even when I did well, I felt I was not good enough to just be treated well unless I proved something. I ******** hated it, but instead I took the anger back on me ie. I got depressed. Society is brainwashed, and I got brainwashed and seriously hurt. I lot of people can go unconscious of all this stuff, just like people go unconscious of how they are hurting others and themselves. I hit my limit in high school, when I was maintaining my appearance in school, with friends, a girlfriend, my family, society and even myself.. I must have had anger at myself for not being on my side. The hardest thing to do is have compassion for oneself.

Does this make sense to others? Anyone want to discuss?

[Momotori]

The_Martyr

This isn't about just high school and middle school. This is about college and the expectations.

So, I'm a college freshman, music education major... In every single one of my classes, I have my teachers saying "This class is the most important class you have. It should be at the forefront of anything you do, because if you don't pass this, you don't move on"... Well... Yeah. That's how classes are. You don't pass, you can't move forward. Is it just me, or is it ridiculous with the amount of pressure and work that is put on a common college student?

A few statistics:
- Suicide is the third leading cause of death for those aged 15-24 and the second leading cause of death of college students.
- Students reported during the last school year feeling the following:
Over 60% of the students reported feeling things were hopeless one or more times.
Almost 40% of the men and 50% of the women reported feeling so depressed that they had difficulty functioning one or more times.
10% of the students reported seriously considering attempting suicide at least one time.
(cited from healthyminds.org)

I mean... Really? Maybe it's just me. Do you think schools, parents and society in general are putting way too much pressure on students to succeed? Many times, people won't even make it past their freshman year, they drop out and even after that, they are pushed even HARDER to be at the top of their class. Is there too much pressure being put on college students?

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm a college freshman too, at a school that trains students for med school, and even the science classes for non science majors are pretty rigorous. My biology class this semester actually requires more that the ones for science majors (mine's supposed to be easier- non science majors). That tacked onto the fact that I mainly went to please my family (none of which are helping to pay for it I might add), I'm pretty much dropping out at the end of this semester.

[Momotori]

Daralea

Face it. College/University is where people go to get their dreams killed.

Really? that was high school for me

[RPJ]

DearSX

Depression in anger turned in on oneself. So students are really taking out their anger on themselves ie. getting depressed. Why? Because students feel/think/see themselves as losers and/or failures and/or not good enough ie. ashamed. Society, friends, and/or parents are shamming to students. A student even shames him/herself into depression. Suicide seems like an appropriate response to those that feel they don't have an existence worth living because they are just not good enough ie. shameful, ie. mistakes. Society teaches us to put down and hold the "losers and "bad" peopple" responsible for a messed up life. When we focus on ourselves as the shameful, we take things out on ourselves, often unconsciously.

I was suicidal in high school and had a very painful time, even when I did well, I felt I was not good enough to just be treated well unless I proved something. I ******** hated it, but instead I took the anger back on me ie. I got depressed. Society is brainwashed, and I got brainwashed and seriously hurt. I lot of people can go unconscious of all this stuff, just like people go unconscious of how they are hurting others and themselves. I hit my limit in high school, when I was maintaining my appearance in school, with friends, a girlfriend, my family, society and even myself.. I must have had anger at myself for not being on my side. The hardest thing to do is have compassion for oneself.

Does this make sense to others? Anyone want to discuss?

I had a friend that literally ruined my high school life. Im doing 12th grade now, have no friends, have social phobia and bad grades.
Yet a girl asked me if i wanted to join their group, i said no. I was depressed, angered with myself for being so shy. So i decided i would write her a note with my e-mail adress. She added me, then i met another guy and a girl from their group. All this on msn.
Tomorrow they expect me to join them. That is my greatest fear. It's so lame it makes me angry with myself and consequently depressed.
I stopped being in anger with myself blaming a snake in my brain that i need to kill by facing my fears. When i kill this snake i will be free so i need to face my fears and go join that group.

I don't anger myself anymore when im depressed, i anger the snake that is inside me (my fears).

Hopefully it will work. High school is hard, Life is hard. Sadness is the yang of happiness. Without it there would be no ying.

Happiness is relative to sadness.

You need BAWLS to make something out of your life.

[AxeSlayerMiyavi]

The feeling of "hopelessness" has nothing to do with pressures from school. It's something inately deeper than a simple class.

If you ask me, the reason why students are dropping out are because they haven't learned the skillsets that were needed for colledge from their primary education days. Collegework IS NOT hard when one has the proper education to actually do the work. I believe that is it either this or laziness (in other words the inability to work hard) that is having students drop out of college. Pressure alone is not going to make someone give up unless there is alterior reason for their anxiety.

[Lady Tam Li Hua]

If you think American colleges and universities are hard, you should talk to a Japanese student sometime.

Besides that, university is a breeze compared to the Daily Grind.

[poison_kisses]

Of course there's going to be a lot of pressure put on you, it's university! It's 'higher learning'. No prof is going to come into class on the first day and say "Listen, you guys, seriously, don't even really bother with this course. You don't need to work for your grade in this class. Just know how to write you student name and number and you'll pass." They're all going to say that their class is important and you have to work hard for your grade, because they want you to try, to work hard, and make sure you learn something. Except for this first year geology course (that I took solely for another science credit), where the prof came in on the first day and said "Come to class, and you'll get an A". He was right.

But seriously, of course there's pressure to do well. If you're paying all this money, don't you want your money's worth by working for your grades? How can you learn if the grades are just given to you?

For your stats, as every stats class drills into your head: correlation does not imply causation.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_53X1LEXXPA4/SbptmhMm50I/AAAAAAAABic/YQjIuRbhxgw/s1600-h/correlation.png
(because I'm a nerd I found that hilarious)