The Overachievers - Alexandra Robbins

This book gave me a stomachache. Alexandra Robbins follows several students at a prestigious high school in Washington, D.C. - and one recent alum, now a freshmen at Harvard, dubbed "AP Frank" after he took 17 Advanced Placement classes. Each of the students is an overachiever in his or her own way. The ones that break my heart the most are the perfectionists who are compelled to copy their notes over and over until their hands ache, who start and restart projects to get them just right, or who are often paralyzed by their inability to achieve pefection. She follows the athletes and the journalists for the school newspaper, she talks about their volunteer activities and their paying jobs. She looks at all aspects of their lives - including the cheating, the substance abuse, and their anxiety - in their quest for admission to an Ivy League school. Robbins talks about the pressures that these high school students are faced with - and while it's easy to mock kids whose biggest problem seems to be deciding between Yale and Princeton, the truth of the matter is that these kids suffer from low self-esteem, from depression and severe sleep disorders, and from a true belief that nothing they have done will ever be worth it unless they can prove that they're the best. There are startling protrayals of parents who push their kids too far - though I was a bit offended that the parent Robbins chose to focus on in this regard was an over the top stereotypical Korean mother whose youngest son was taken away by CPS. Robbins talks to college counselors and admissions officers in an effort to determine what colleges are really looking for - and how students can be encouraged to find a college that is the best fit for them, rather than just the place that is ranked the highest on an arbitrary list. Much of what Robbins wrote about hit home for me. I remember studying on the bus as I rode home from a late night basketball game, worrying about a B+, or any other number of ridiculous things that focused on grades and standardized test scores rather than developing a love of learning and enjoying my life in the moment. It's sad that I feel like I've spent a lot of the past few years undoing so much of the mentality I cultivated through high school. And, while I don't think I ever worked as hard as any of the kids in this book, Robbins reveals their stories in part to encourage all of us to reexamine what it means to be successsful - and whether we're really willing to pay the price that the effects of striving for success take on our children. While Robbins is certainly not advocating mediocrity, she does believe there is a way for students to get good grades, score well on tests, play sports, enjoy music, help others - and whatever else they choose - without sacrificing their ethics or their health in the process. At the end of the book, Robbins has some concrete examples of things that universities, high schools, parents, and students themselves can do to avoid the negative effects of overachieving. While society itself will probably never get over its obsession with perfect scores and Ivy League admissions, I do think Robbins' solutions will help individuals achieve greater happiness and overall satisfaction.