Campus Calm Community
Where students speak out about grades, stress and personal well-being

Henry David Thoreau once said, "Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails." Well, school's in session, you've got two papers due next week, three quizzes to study for and a part-time job to help you pay the bills. Sorry Henry, who's got time to live deliberately? Well, you do if you want to excel in school and in life.

Studies show that if you simply learn continuously your retention of the information you are trying to learn drops steadily. If you're cramming all the information you can into your head before a test, you're not really going to retain anything. However, just before and just after you take a short break your memory for an item is much better. Therefore, if you take short breaks, at something like 30 to 60 minute intervals, you will find you will remember more.

Advice? Load your books into your backpack and bike to a nearby park. Study for 30 minutes, then take fifteen minutes to soak up your surroundings. Better yet, study for an hour, then take an hour off and walk the park. Breathe autumn's crisp fresh air. If you're lucky enough to live in an area that boasts fall foliage, study the colors of the leaves on the trees. Those leaves will be gone for another season before you know it, and you will have missed a magic moment to see. Red. Yellow. Orange. Let the fallen leaves crackle under your feet as you swoosh ahead. Simplify. If you've got more than two extracurricular activities in addition to your regular school load, consider gracefully bowing out of one of them to free up a little "me" time. No one's going to fault you for taking a break. Go back to your homework after your walk and discover how much you retained. Who knew that Henry David Thoreau guy could help to make you so smart?

Let's discuss:

• Anyone have any creative ideas for combining school work and play?
• Does experiencing nature help you when you're stressed out about school?
• How important do you think "me" time is?

Leave me feedback at the end of this entry. I'd love to hear from you!

Ready or not, October marks that time of year when college-bound high school juniors prepare to take the PSAT, which serves as practice for that dreaded and sometimes feared SAT I. Before you work yourself up into a full-fledged anxiety attack at the mere mention of the word “SAT”, consider this:

The National Center for Fair and Open Testing lists over 730 four-year colleges in the United States that no longer require the SAT I or ACT for admission. That’s right – over 730 colleges! Moreover, a rising number of colleges are beginning to place a bigger emphasis on grades and personal accomplishments over scores.

The belief that you’ll never get into a good college and you’ll never be successful in life if you don’t master the SAT is a total myth. I’ll give you a personal example: Both in our twenties, my husband and I are not SAT success stories. I scored a mere 1070 on the SAT in 1996 and never bothered to retake the test. I hate standardized tests and never do well on them. Yet I still went to an excellent college in Western New York on an academic scholarship and graduated at the top of my class. Today, I’m an accomplished writer with national and regional credits. My 27-year-old husband never even took the SAT! He went to a two-year college for graphic design that didn’t require the SATs. After he received his Associates degree, he transferred to a four-year college and earned his Bachelors degree with honors. Today, he’s a successful print/web designer. We are not the exceptions to the rule.

I’m certainly not telling you to waltz into the SAT exam room with an “I-don’t-give-a-s#@$” attitude, but keep things in perspective. Whether you ace the SATs, fail them big-time, retake them three times, or decide never to take them at all, you can be successful in life. I will repeat that: You CAN be successful in life with or without the SAT, or the ACT for that matter.

Questions:

• What SAT score or ACT score do you consider “good enough?”
• Do you plan to retake the SAT or ACT if you don’t get the score you hoped for?
• Do you believe you can be successful in life without the SAT?
• Any stories on this subject that you’d like to share?

Feel free to leave me feedback at the end of this entry with your thoughts. I always value students’ opinions!

Further reading:
The National Center for Fair and Open Testing
Taking aim at admissions anxiety

On September 4th, Time Magazine ran a Viewpoint article titled, "The Myth About Homework," that brings up some interesting points. Like how "a rising tide of dull, useless assignments is oppressing families and making kids hate learning." The author cites a 2004 national survey of 2,900 American children conducted by the University of Michigan, which revealed that the amount of time spent on homework is up 51 percent since 1981.

Students:

• How many hours per night are you spending on homework?
• How much homework is too much? Should there be a nightly time limit on homework and/or no homework over vacations?
• Do you think too much homework kills curiosity? Why or why not?
• If teachers stop dishing out so much homework, do you think your classroom performance would suffer?
• What would you do with the extra free time after school if you had less homework?

Leave me a comment below and share your thoughts. Your opinions matter and should be heard!

In a recent study, the National Mental Health Association reported that 10 percent of college students and 13 percent of college women have been diagnosed with depression. A University of California at Los Angeles survey found that more than 30 percent of college freshmen report feeling overwhelmed a great deal of the time, and that 38 percent of college women report feeling frequently overwhelmed.

According to the 2005-2006 "State of Our Nation's Youth" report findings that were released by the Horatio Alger Association in the summer 2005, 41 percent of high school students said that the pressure to get good grades was a major concern. These numbers have increased by 15 percent since 2001.

For whatever reason - the need to impress future employers, the pressure of keeping up with peers or simply meeting self-imposed but unrealistically high standards - an increasing number of high school and college students are literally making themselves sick in the pursuit of perfection.

My battle with perfectionism

Unfortunately, I understand all too well the price students pay for measuring self worth through a number on a test. A perfectionist through my college years, I'd rather skip an assignment than risk turning in a less-than-perfect paper. I fantasized about the day I would walk across the stage at my graduation ceremony and hear my name announced along with "summa cum laude" -- with highest honors. My family would be in the audience snapping pictures and beaming with pride. By my senior year, that goal had become an obsession.

When I finally did walk across that stage in 2001, I held back tears with everything I had in me. They weren't tears of joy, as my professors and family might have imagined, but of a sick sorrow. The speaker announced, "Maria L. Pascucci, summa cum laude." I did it -- I graduated with the highest honors possible, but at much too high a psychological cost.

I had dreamt of being a writer ever since I was old enough to pick up a pencil and scribble my name, but after I graduated from college, I didn't write a thing for months. I told my college career counselor that I would never write again, and I believed that I wouldn't. I was burnt out and depressed, battling with anxiety-induced stomach problems and certain that writing had almost destroyed me. Five years later, I understand that it was perfectionism that almost destroyed me and that my love of writing helped me to rebuild my life.

When I was a little girl, I'd always tell people, "Someday, when I grow up, I'll be a writer." When the cap and gown came off, I realized that society considered me a grown-up whether I felt like one or not, and that it was the time to make or break my dreams. And I didn't think I could measure up to what that little girl envisioned while sitting on a porch stoop with her favorite red notebook in hand. It's so much easier to dream of the end product than to actually see it through.

Anxiety, depression, insomnia

I've suffered stomachaches, insomnia, anxiety and depression from the unrealistic expectations I'd placed on myself to be the best. Can any of you relate? At what price should success come? Should we have to sacrifice our health to be successful?

In a word: NO. Once I learned to start defining success on my own terms and ditched my need to be perfect, I'm more successful today than ever before. And if I can do it, so can you!

Leave me a comment below and share your thoughts. I'd LOVE to discuss this with you.

Veronica Bassano, 16, is a model student. She gets good grades; she's involved in lots of extracurricular activities and has big dreams for the future. She plans to apply to an art school for college. Not just any art school though - her heart is set on the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Chicago or Yale. She knows she has to master the SAT to get accepted into these prestigious colleges and she's prepared to take them as many times as it takes to get the score she desires.

"I'm not looking for perfection, just good enough, better than good," says the Lancaster Central High School junior whose grades currently range from the mid to high 90s. This ambitious teen is under lots of pressure though - the pressure to get good grades, the pressure to compete for college acceptance and the pressure to live up to her parents', her friends' and her own lofty expectations.

All that pressure can be a little overwhelming. When Veronica gets less than an "A" on a test or an essay, she says she has to coach herself to remain positive. She admits that a few times she's started crying. "I tell myself, "It's OK, you have to go onto the next class and concentrate.'" Veronica enjoys competition and becomes upset if she's not achieving top grades along with her friends. "I feel like I'm not adequate," she says. "I have friends who are at the top of the class so I feel like I'm not up to where they are. Sometimes, I feel not as intelligent or not as good as I should be."

Rachel Delamater, 17, also a junior at Lancaster in Buffalo, New York, agrees. "The class list comes out and shows who's on the top and you try so hard to be in the top 20," she says. "The top 15, all their averages are at least 100." On occasion, Rachel says she lets anxiety get the best of her. Sometimes when she's studying, she'll say, "I don't get this, I'll never remember this for the test. What about the SATs? I'll never get into college. I'll never be successful."

Stressed out students

These two teens are not alone. According to the 2005-2006 "State of Our Nation's Youth" report findings that were released by the Horatio Alger Association this past summer, 41 percent of high school students said that the pressure to get good grades was a major concern. These numbers have increased by 15 percent since 2001.

"Students in all school districts should always be made to feel that their worth is more than just the numbers that they earn," says Lynn Kawa, guidance counselor for Sweet Home High School in Amherst, New York. If a student is freaking out about one bad grade on a test, she will work with them. "I would initially listen to the student's concerns about the grade," she says. "I would talk with him or her about the overall impact that one grade may have on the final grade for the course, or the student's overall grade point average. With the next assignment or test brings a chance to improve upon the previous grade."

Not every student stresses over every grade though. Rachel believes that being well-rounded helps her to put grades in perspective. "I'm in clubs and play sports," she says. "If I'm not the top science person I can always say, "I'm good in English.' And with electives, I can focus more on what I like."

"Not everybody is going to get 4.0s because that's impossible," says Denise Clark Pope, author of the 2001 book "Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students." Pope works with Stanford University's School of Education in California and has helped to develop community awareness of student stress through a program called SOS: Stressed Out Students: Helping to Improve Health, School Engagement, and Academic Integrity.

Pope challenges students to think about what makes a human being successful. "If getting a perfect GPA is one of those things," she says, "what's been left off that list like being a kind friend, and being a supportive family member, enjoying life, being healthy and taking the time to take care of your body?"

"My English teacher is always telling students not to worry about grades," says Veronica. "If you become a better reader or a better writer, he'll give you a good grade. We have to show him we want to learn." Her AP American History teacher also encourages students to look at the bigger picture. "He says, "If you fail a test, it's OK, just keep learning.'" Rachel adds: "It's OK to be happy with 80s sometimes because 80s aren't bad."

Tips to depressurize

If you have three finals coming up and two essays due, you're undoubtedly stressed. But stressing out to the point of stomachaches or insomnia is definitely not cool.

"Exercise is the best stress reliever," says Veronica. She plays sports and walks her dog in the park with her mom in the winter. "That helps a lot," she says. She says that yoga, Pilates or listening to music are also great but so is anything that works for any individual student. "Take an hour or a half hour or however long your schedule permits and do whatever you want," advises Veronica. "Don't worry about anything. Go talk to your friends, use the computer, and watch TV - anything so you're not focused on grades."

If you have a big test to study for, Veronica recommends taking small breaks at 20-minute intervals. "There's a timer on my microwave that I set for 20 minutes and once it goes off I will stop completely even if I'm in the middle of something and I take a five-minute break," she says. "I'll get up and get a glass of water and then I'll set it for another 20 minutes."

For Rachel, it's all about the music. "When I stress out over homework, I just put on a CD and then I'm good and then I go back to it and I'm like, "All right, this isn't so bad. I can do this.'" For the love of learning Veronica had the option to take other AP classes besides American History but instead chose to take an art elective. "I decided that if I really want to go for art, I should take a class I'm going to like," she says. "If I had taken more AP classes, I wouldn't have had a lunch and my parents told me I needed lunch for the break."

For the love of learning

Many students overload their schedules with AP classes and compete for top grades to get into the best colleges, believing that the college will make all the difference in determining future success. "There's a huge misconception that you need to go to a top-tier college to be successful in life," says Pope. "College is a match, not a trophy. It's the kid, not the school, that makes the difference."

"Everyone stresses college, college, college," Rachel adds. "If you want to take a year off, everyone's like, "You can't do that.' If you take time off, you're labeled a bum." Although Rachel plans to attend college, she recognizes that college isn't the answer for everyone. "My mom always says, "Well, not every one is meant for college.'"

For Rachel, learning is all about personal growth. "Everyone always says, "You're never going to need this when you grow up,'" she says. "So just take it and it's something extra you can know. On "Jeopardy,' a question will come up and you can be like, "I know this!' and it will make you feel better about yourself. It's all an opportunity to learn something new."

Students: I'd LOVE to hear your comments!

Do you:

• Ever stress about grades?
• Ever find yourself up at night worrying over school?
• Get stomachaches before a big test or paper is due?

How do you deal with the pressure? Do you exercise, spend time with friends, visit your campus counseling center, talk with your teacher or parents? Leave me a comment below and share your thoughts.