Summary: The Myth Of The Overstressed American Teens

In today's society American teens start the school year off energized and eager to learn. Although, over time some of the students’ performance plummets, which many say is from being exhausted or overworked. However, two different articles have the idea that kids and young teenagers growing tense and overburdened from the vigorous workload. One of the Articles written by Frank Bruni titled, "Today's Exhausted Superkids" argues his opinion on teenagers' stress, exhaustion and its correlation to school courses. Though, he focused on wealthy and privileged families. On the other hand, Robert Pondiscio has written an article called "The Myth of the Overstressed American Teen" where Pondiscio states that Brunis claims are false and provides us with

History. I decided to take an AP course to challenge myself mentally. Yet, I did not know it was going to be overwhelming as I was assigned to read multiple pages every day for homework. Nonetheless, the reading is very dense and hard to comprehend which made me struggle with the packets we had to fill out that correlates to the reading. When I would get home, I would do my homework but sometimes I would feel stressed out because it is just too much work so instead I would go on my phone so I can take a small break from my work. Eventually, I lose track of time since I would be distracted on my phone. In the end of the day I would be left with a couple of hours, which lead me to cramming on my assignments and stressing out on trying to get everything done correctly. Despite this, in Bruni’s article he argues students to take more AP classes as he states “Take one more Advanced Placement class.” the fact that Bruni makes it sound easy to take an AP course. Yet, Pondiscio disagrees with students being stress and overschedule as he states “If American childhood has become a hothouse of overscheduling and stress, it’s not showing up in the data”. Pondiscio in which he integrates a study in his article from trio of researchers Joseph L. Mahoney etc.were in the data Pondiscio infers that “Two-thirds of American high school graduates take exactly none..fewer than 8 percent of

This refers to those parents who overschedule their kids with AP courses and other resources to prepare the students for exams and assignments according to Bruni (Bruni,2 ). Even though, Bruni disagrees with the concept of helicopter parents in which he states that “There’s a unifying theme: Enough is enough”. Yet, I comply with the concept of helicopter parents because I believe students can achieve positive results such as higher GPAs and test scores, but that work does lead to kids being exhausted and overstressed from being overworked. Moreover, Parents fill up their kids schedule with extra curricular activities which may sound exhausting yet, it has positive outcomes. To exemplify, the previous statement physical well-being, higher self-esteem and also higher high school graduation rates are some of those results according to Pondiscio (Pondiscio,2). Despite this, from experience of my parents being helicopter parenting was in the beginning of my high school year. I did not care much of my education in which I would sometimes do my homework and not study much for exams as I would go out with my friends instead. Eventually my grades had plummeted and my parents had found out as my progress reports sent to my house. My parents knew I was not doing well, so they decided to become more strict on me since they would not let me go out until I