I go to a competitive high school in surburbia. The stress is killing me.

MSN News ^ | MARCH 29, 2016 | Ethan Brown

[detective]

We just want you to have a good senior year!"

I hardly heard the words leave my guidance counselor's mouth as I stumbled out of her office. I could barely walk back to my classroom without collapsing. I tried to process what just happened and to make sense of the fear inside me. No such luck. I was a mess of emotions, held together haphazardly by black coffee and teenage angst.

[detective]

Pampered little 16-year-old high school junior in northern Virginia "toils over his homework, runs his school's Gay Straight Alliance and Model United Nations team."

And he can't handle the stress. He calls himself a "victim." His goal is to go to graduate school and then work for the State Department.

But he just can't handle the stress of taking AP classes in high school. He whines about it.

He writes about his sister, "I vividly remember hearing her crying at 2 in the morning over her AP physics lab, and ranting to her friends about her failings in AP Spanish."

My kids took many AP classes in high school. They also took college level courses in high school. They also played sports. And they worked part time.

Today in their mid 20's they have worked their way up to management jobs at large corporations and are doing well.

But they never whined like this kid does.

[camle]

if you can’t handle high school, how do you expect the real world? grow up snowflake

[taxcontrol]

Lots of kids take AP classes not realizing that getting a lower grade in and AP class compared to a higher grade in a normal class works against their GPA.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

His goal is to go to graduate school and then work for the State Department.

With US foreign policy the way it is, he'll fit right in.

[null and void]

They aren’t gay (synonym ‘happy’)...

[struggle]

Um, AP courses are DESIGNED TO BE STRESSFUL. They are high-stakes courses with a college level test attached in order to substitute the class for college tuition if you pass. We have kids at the HS I teach at taking 6 AP courses a year.

[caver]

Good grief!

[dsrtsage]

Not all kids are capable of everything. The problem is the system and his parents have constantly told him he is smarter and more wonderfuller than he really is with participation trophies and whatnot, and he cannot process the disconnect between that fantasy and his current reality

[Gaffer]

I suggest he ingest drugs. Lots and lots of illegal drugs. All he can get. Anytime, anyplace he can do it. The more the better.

He is not needed in this country’s future.

Go on! Do it! Jump Cartman, Jump! Go on, do it!

[CodeToad]

Not seeing these geniuses in the colleges.

For all these charter schools, private schools, “magnet” schools, etc., there simply are not the educated little kiddies those schools should be graduating into college.

The SAT has been dumbed down and the schools now teach the SAT as a course, yet, the average SAT score is now below 1000. An SAT score of 1000 used to mean “join the Army, dummy, college ain’t for you.”

[relictele]

It’s ‘competitive’ mostly because of grade inflation, lowered standards and the lefties’ ongoing attempt to pretend fully one-half of the bell curve doesn’t exist.

Advanced Placement and so-called gifted programs really aren’t. They are merely what used to be standard courses that didn’t tolerate the ignorant, the criminal, the disruptive and the genetically deficient.

It’s also ‘competitive’ because knowledge of fact, logic, musical ability, etc. have been made subordinate to the frequent, strident endorsement of PC dogma. A term paper on the fraud known as Climate Change, however meticulously written, argued, proofed, formatted and cited, would receive a less-than-deserving grade because the teacher disagreed or because it violated Received Wisdom.

Students who don’t challenge the system have no place complaining about the system.

[cgbg]

This guy has a better deal than 99.9% of his peers around the world.

If he can’t handle the stress he needs to lower the workload a little bit—no big deal.

Surely someone else can handle the Gay Straight Alliance duties. :-)

[OttawaFreeper]

I bet he wishes he had Barack’s mother or grandparents who probably wrote notes excusing their Messiah child from homework and other mundane things at school that probably bored him (if nothing else).

[BenLurkin]

Gay Straight Alliance and Model United Nations

[SgtHooper]

He’ll back into that job.

[Gamecock]

My oldest graduated high school with 6 AP math credits, her senior year she lettered in 4 sports. (Small school where you could play everything) Did Model United Nations. Senior class officer, etc.

She finished college in 3.5 years, lettering in her favorite sport and was president of her "literary society."

She worked for a couple years and is now finishing graduate school with a highly specialized degree in a field that pays well. In fact she just started her dream job with a couple months to go before graduation, so she is commuting between work and school.

As she says, The world is no place for slackers.

[dfwgator]

The world needs ditch diggers, too.

[blueunicorn6]

What is a “good” life?

[SkyPilot]

Here is a picture of some Americans who have left their Safe Space.

I worked during High School, played Varsity sports, took AP and Honors classes, and graduated in the top 1% of my class, and I did so while living with a mentally ill mom who later committed suicide. I went on to major in Engineering with a full ROTC scholarship, and then onto pilot training, and served in 3 wars.

Life isn't fair, but God sustains those who come to Him.

I ran across little "State Dept" folks like the wannabe in this article during my military career. The DOS folks were all metro-sexual and no action. They expected the US military to do their dirty work for them, but they could do nothing themselves except make trouble and complain that they were not treated as the "intellectuals" they were.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Stress? Tell it to some 16 year old Black kid in the ‘hood who dodges bullets every day and whose future includes the drive-thru window and a SNAP card. IF he’s lucky.