By Alexandra Robbins Hyperion; 1st edition 2006;

ISBN: 1401302017

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.

REVIEWS

From Publishers Weekly

In this engrossing anthropological study of the cult of overachieving that is prevalent in many middle-and upper-class schools, Robbins (Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities) follows the lives of students from a Bethesda, Md., high school as they navigate the SAT and college application process. These students are obsessed with success, contending with illness, physical deterioration (senior Julie is losing hair over the pressure to get into Stanford), cheating (students sell a physics project to one another), obsessed parents ( Frank's mother manages his time to the point of abuse) and emotional breakdowns. What matters to them is that all-important acceptance to the right name-brand school. "When teenagers inevitably look at themselves through the prism of our overachiever culture," Robbins writes, "they often come to the conclusion that no matter how much they achieve, it will never be enough." The portraits of the teens are compelling and make for an easy read. Robbins provides a series of critiques of the system, including college rankings, parental pressure, the meaninglessness of standardized testing and the push for A.P. classes. She ends with a call to action, giving suggestions on how to alleviate teens' stress and panic at how far behind they feel. (Aug.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Robbins, author of the revealing Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities (2004), investigates yet another troubling aspect of today's youth, the culture of high-school high achievers, a group to which she once belonged. To see if things had changed during the 10 years since she left high school, Robbins returned to her alma mater, one of the most competitive high schools in the country, to observe several students (juniors and seniors and one recent graduate, who was admitted to Harvard) as they balanced intense academic pressure, parental expectations, personal interests, social life, and their own drive to succeed. What she discovered is no surprise: the welfare of the individual has taken a backseat to academic success. Nor is her call for "massive change of both attitudes and educational policies" new. That said, it's difficult to ignore her perspectives on such issues as the influence of the SAT or the day-to-day struggles of the kids, who can't rest until they "outwit, outplay, and outlast" the competition. An addendum directed to parents, schools officials, counselors, and students sets benchmarks for activists who want things to change. Stephanie Zvirin

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description

The bestselling author of Pledged returns with a groundbreaking look at the pressure to achieve faced by America’s teens

In Pledged, Alexandra Robbins followed four college girls to produce a riveting narrative that read like fiction. Now, in The Overachievers, Robbins uses the same captivating style to explore how our highstakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins goes back to her high school, where she follows heart-tuggingly likeable students including "AP" Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressure to succeed; Audrey, whose panicked perfectionism overshadows her life; Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn’t attend a name-brand college; Taylor, whose ambition threatens her popular girl status; and The Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar.

Robbins tackles teen issues such as intense stress, the student and teacher cheating epidemic, sports rage, parental guilt, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that students are driven to suicide and depression because of a B.

With a compelling mix of fast-paced narrative and fascinating investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers.