In high school I never had many extreme cases of “doing school” but I had a close friend who ended up becoming mentally ill by senior year from all the pressure he was putting on himself. He possessed many of the traits that I saw in the students from Pope’s book Doing School. He seemed to embody Pope’s main argument of how the school systems have the wrong focus and send the wrong message to their students . Through our high school career I observed the persistence of Eve, the drive for pursuing the arts of Michelle, and later the carelessness of Kevin develop in my friend.
Ever since I met Isaiah he had a strong drive for his academics. When we started high school, he enrolled in classes that were for sophomores and by junior year he was enrolled in two Advanced Placement classes. He had been sucked into the system and developed a fear that Eve repeated numerously. The school systems had ingrained in them, “If I quit something, I will consider myself a failure, and I really
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He felt that it was an escape from the academic stresses. Ever since freshman year he had pushed himself toward a leading role, from being one of the Von Trap children in the Sound of Music to Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. He like Michelle felt, “the real sense of challenge…Each play offered a different “hurdle” to be overcome and new lessons to be learned,” when they were involved with things they enjoyed (Pope, 109). Isaiah had told me during his breaking point senior year how stressed he was. He said, “I love performing because you’re taught how to act and what to say when and there isn’t any pressure for failure because you can always improve, but away from the stage I only know how to take tests and answer questions.” It hurt so much to realize my friend who was so talented, couldn’t realize how talented he was away from the stage. After that point he didn’t have the same drive which was a lot like