Tomorrow, you are supposed to hang out with some of your closest friends for someone’s birthday.
The time is now 11:30 PM and you still have two hours of homework left. To get into the college you want, you are taking five AP classes this year. As you stare at the dim blue glow of your laptop, you worry you’ll need to ditch those plans tomorrow.
This is a fictionalized scenario, but the possibility of missing out on major life events in favor of school is very real for many Liberty students. Taking more and more AP classes to further that number that gets you into college is becoming an insurmountable task.
We at the Patriot Press believe that this phenomenon of “toxic productivity” is dangerous to the teenage population and that our collective focus on our futures is hindering our present.
Most teenagers know someone who has had to sacrifice passions in favor of grades.
“My little brother had to drop robotics because of his AP classes,” junior staff member Seraphina Law said.
And it’s not just clubs, or extracurriculars that were extra in the first place. It’s factors of our lives that are essential to our development. We are sacrificing our experiences.
“I have a friend who has eight hours of homework every night- she has no social life,” senior staff writer Avery Steele said.
The worst part? Sometimes our hard work doesn’t help us at all. Instead, we are left to wonder what we could have done with the time we spent studying.
“When my brother was in high school he was one of those 7 AP kids, and only half of those credits transferred. He was upset that he wasted time taking every class he could while also maintaining sports,” senior Lily Philips said.
We are aiming so far forward that our lives at the present moment are suffering. We are losing our personalities to the endless bout of exhaustion that comes with so many challenging commitments.
“Everything you do is about progression. You have to keep moving and if you stop you’re behind,” senior social editor Berlyn Crockett said.
Students who aim even higher have been known to join clubs and extracurriculars- simply for the brownie points of seeming like they participate in their communities. In reality, these ghost members, or even entire clubs, rarely show up at all.
“A problem I’ve noticed is people start to add things that they only want for the title. No one joins things that you care about,” senior feature editor Alexa Rand said.
This problem has become so rampant in extracurricular circles that entire clubs, cheap offshoots of other clubs, only exist for the merit of being in them.
“There are so many clubs that are not real. They are only there to get credits,” senior Isabella Schmitt said.
Possibly the weirdest part about all of this? This is the same generation who not too long ago was solely focused on mental health and avoiding burnout. What happened to “mental health matters” and prioritizing yourself?
“You stop thinking about yourself because of the burnout- looking to the future is the only way people keep going,” Crockett said.
Instead of caring about ourselves, we have turned to machinizing our everyday lives. We won’t remember our high school years as a fond memory full of friends and new experiences, but instead as late nights and never-ending homework.
“People’s lives are starting to become an equation to optimize,” junior staff writer Rhone Eiler said.
It isn’t just our social lives that are suffering. Working so hard all the time means that we stop taking care of ourselves.
“When you overload yourself, you stop eating and sleeping well. You’re stunting your lifespan,” sophomore staff writer Vanessa Castaneda said.
If we are sacrificing everything for our future, will there be anything left of us when we get there?