Fast-forward 50 years. Taking a glimpse back at your high school days, what runs through your head? That one time you studied so hard for your calc test? When you made those 50 flashcards and got an 88 on that vocab quiz? No, of course not. You’ll remember prom, Friday night football games and the weekend you spent downtown with your best friends.

We all have the pressure on us to be academic wizards and we all feel like a failure when we get less than a B on a test. The issue of grade inflation was mentioned in our last guest column, and how it’s both beneficial and detrimental to our student body. On one hand, it’s great because more kids are getting the grades they want; however, it has destroyed the age-old belief that C is average, now putting more pressure on kids to be great students. So many students go through this educational predicament, but there has to be a point when you have to ask yourself: Is it worth it?

I know my parents have told me several times and it’s been drilled into my mind: “Enjoy high school and college. They’re the best years of your life.” These 8 years, on average, will be only about 10 percent of your long life. But, the enjoyment of these years gets harder and harder because it seems everyone is becoming more aware that their performance in high school decides a large portion of their life.

While this is true, it’s an overemphasized fact and there’s not enough kids appreciating their “glory years.” You can’t just go out on and tailgate for your high school’s football team every week when you’re 35. You won’t be able to go out and get Portillos at midnight with your best friends at the age when you’ll need help to even get up. Some of these things are simply meant for your younger years.

A statement I hear several times a week from all types of people, year-round: “It looks good on college applications.” This statement is absurd, even laughable. The idea of participating in clubs, groups and teams for the sole reason of getting into college is shameful. I constantly see students joining academic clubs, sports teams, religious groups, performance groups all willy nilly just so they can put them on their college applications, and that “colleges like that kind of stuff”.

I’m not trying to discourage extracurricular participation. We need students to be in the amazing clubs and groups available at LT, but when students join the wrong clubs or sports just because they want to seem intelligent or follow trends it is harmful and wrong for the school and the students. What makes LT the amazing school we all know and love is its wide variety of opportunities to be involved in the community and be able to do what you love.

However, this privilege is being abused. I don’t feel like we truly have hundreds of kids that are really fascinated by the activities and classes they’re involved in, but rather they’re just there for the academic benefit. People who lack passion often contribute very little, and can even be destructive. If you join groups you truly have an interest in, rather than ones that are popular and smart, you won’t even think of it as a way to get accepted by colleges. It becomes a hobby, not a burden.
Kids need to become less obsessed with being the perfect, well-rounded, renaissance student that they think they absolutely have to be. Go to a Cubs game downtown or have a bonfire at your friend’s house. It doesn’t matter what it is, just make it something worthwhile.