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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
The
Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven
Kids
by Alexandra Robbins
Hyperion - August
2006
The first time I met AP Frank, before
he left home for Harvard, he told me about
a philosophy of his that worried him. He
said, "When you cage up an animal for all
of its life and then you let it free, it's
going to go crazy." He was afraid that
once he got to college, he would
experience that fate.
Many students don't wait until college
to attempt to break free. As C.J.
suggested, high school students might not
drink because of peer pressure. They drink
because of pressure, period. They drink
because of pressure to be superlative.
They drink because of pressure to be
perfect. Consider all of the other factors
that high school students have to deal
with in addition to academic stress.
Besides the full-time job of
overachieving, students deal extensively
with social, psychological, romantic,
identity, and family issues while at the
same time trying to navigate adolescence.
None of these pressures lets up after the
bell rings at the end of the school
day.
Students can get so tightly wound, it's
understandable that they search for
outlets to let off steam. Drinking alcohol
happens to be one of the most popular
methods, perhaps not surprisingly, given
adults' habits of imbibing to unwind. Like
adults, many students say they "need a
drink" to escape the stress and pressure
of their daily lives. By the time they
reach twelfth grade, almost 80 percent of
students have consumed alcohol, and nearly
a third have engaged in binge drinking,
defined as having five or more drinks on
one occasion. By eighth grade, almost half
of all students have tried alcohol, and
more than 20 percent say they have been
drunk. At the college level, campuses
report record increases in binge drinking.
As University of Virginia professor John
Portmann told Psychology Today, "There is
a ritual every university administrator
has come to fear. Every fall, parents drop
off their well-groomed freshmen, and
within two or three days, many have
consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol and
placed themselves in harm's way. These
kids have been controlled for so long,
they just go crazy."
The statistically good news is that
nationwide, illicit drug use is on the
decline. (Illegal use of prescription
drugs is on the upswing, however, as
discussed in Chapter Fourteen.) But the
sad fact is that students who try these
substances often do so less out of
rebelliousness than out of escapism. As a
Massachusetts junior told me, "I turned to
drugs and alcohol because I felt the need
to escape everything. I no longer do any
of that because I realize it was dangerous
and stupid. Sometimes I do think about it,
though. Everything seemed much simpler
when I could escape the pain and loss of
control."
For many students, there's another
outlet that falls under the umbrella of
"partying" to relieve stress: sex, or just
fooling around. "I suppose I went to
extremes because of the amount I was
working and the reputation I had," a
California senior said. "I enjoyed being
the valedictorian who could still get
drunk or high or have sex on the weekends.
My friends knew me as someone who would
study until late at night, then go out
with a guy, and wake up on Saturday
morning to go running and then study all
day. It's funny to think that being a good
student led to me trying dangerous things,
but I think I was just trying to break the
mold."
When I asked her what adults might not
know about today's high school experience,
she expounded on why she partied. "I was
definitely very stressed, and I worked
very hard. Long nights studying, job
shadows, college classes, internships,
SATs, sports, all at the same time as
balancing a social life. This could be why
students do things to such extremes. There
is a sense of urgency and pressure. Many
of my friends and I would drink to the
point of blacking out. Every time. I would
have sex with guys the first time I hooked
up with them, because I didn't want to
waste time. I think I came out fine, and I
was happy with how I balanced work and
play. But I don't think adults realize
what high schoolers are capable of. They
think that if we work hard and appear to
follow the rules, then we won't make
mistakes."
More than 60 percent of twelfth graders
have had sex, and health centers say
students are experimenting with sex at
younger ages. In recent years, middle
schoolers have been caught having sex on
school buses. In Pennsylvania, a group of
middle school girls who called themselves
the "Pop-Tarts" offered blow jobs at
parties. And in high school, some students
are using sex as a tool to attempt to
break out of the cage.
A midwestern Latina student felt
imprisoned by her parents' pressure to be
the perfect college applicant. They
refused to allow her to take art or music
because the classes weren't APs, and they
forced her to take Spanish classes, even
though she was fluent, to get the easy A.
They also insisted she become a
cheerleader, though she disliked it, so
she would have an extracurricular activity
to bolster her college application. When
she wasn't at school, her cage became more
literal: Her father locked her in her
room, where she was expected to do nothing
but study. Because she wasn't allowed to
leave the house during the weeks before
the SAT, she took to sneaking out late at
night. Just before the test, the
sixteen-year-old sneaked out to have sex
with her boyfriend to relieve her stress
-- and had a pregnancy scare. To this day
her parents don't know about the home
pregnancy tests she frantically took then
and twice more in the ensuing months, or
that she then turned to alcohol as another
escape.
Locked in her room as the SAT neared,
she was forbidden to take breaks, relax,
or chat with friends. Burned out and
stressed beyond belief, the non-drinker
skipped school soon after the test to try
to relax at a friend's house, where she
had two beers. A police officer happened
to catch the students, arrested them, and
jailed them for the day. Her parents
didn't speak to her for a week, but not
because of the arrest. They were furious
because of her 1300 (out of 1600) SAT
score.
Excerpted
from the book The Overachievers by
Alexandra Robbins; Copyright © 2006
Alexandra Robbins and reprinted here by
permission of the author.
New
York Times bestselling author Alexandra
Robbins has written for publications such
as Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, the
Atlantic Monthly, and the
Washington Post, and has appeared
on television shows including Today,
Oprah, 60 Minutes, and The
View.
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