ESCALATION

Minkee Sohn, 8th Grade
San Francisco CA
The Nueva School

Do things faster. Everything’s going fast; if you slip, you’ll fall behind forever. You have to do more after-school activities, too. If you don’t get enough skills in multiple areas, you’re not going to succeed, you know. And if you don’t succeed, it’s the end of your world. A good high school leads to a good college, which leads to a good job, which leads to success, which leads to happiness. Doing homework is never enough to get to the top. You’ve got to do more, work harder. You’re just not good enough.

Sadly enough, these messages have been drilled into me and legions of other teenagers many times, embedded in our minds. Before I go on, I’d just like to say that I’m not targeting my parents when I say this. I’m referring to what society is putting upon us. Aided by globalization and breakthroughs in technology, the world is advancing at a fast pace. And it’s hard to keep up.

Well, to keep up with it and be a healthy teenager, that is.

And that leads to the thing that I would change about this world: If I could change something in this world to make it a better place, I would make it lighten up. As a society, we are growing much too competitive. I see examples all around me, and I’ll write just one of them here. My school hosted a student overnight last year for a novel-writing unit, and it just so happened that that was the day our parents received our SSAT scores. I had no idea that this even happened, so I was surprised when I heard some of my classmates discussing how well they did while we were eating pizza. I remember that one of my friends went outside to call his parents to find out what he got. When he came back, he was distracted and upset for the majority of the time we were given to work. Knowing how hard-working he usually is, he accomplished much less work than I know he easily and definitely could have.

And so questions arise. I can see SSAT scores are significant towards high school. But should going to high school, a continuation of our learning, really be such a stressful process? Are we going to succeed in learning if we’re tense and tired all the time from trying to stay on top? And what about socializing? Students are also supposed to make friends. But if we’re so busy working and don’t have the energy or drive required to build up good ties, isn’t that going to leave us missing something emotionally at graduation?

I’m not trying to dismiss competition as a horrible thing that is eating up students’ lives. Competition is healthy and we all need it. It’s the element that pushes us forward. Actually, competition can be thought of as a way we motivate each other. But at the same time, too much competition can be that “horrible thing.” Too much competition makes us lose self-confidence, feel inadequate, and slowly grow to resent ourselves for not “being good enough.”

While this kind of harsh environment and mindset springs up across most urbanized communities like the Bay Area, I have seen it especially prevalent in Asian and Asian-American families. Being Korean-American, I am familiar with the Asian cultural traits around me. I believe that we Asians are usually unified in sharing some traits, and one that we should be particularly proud of is diligence. I have seen many hard-working Asian-American families, and diligence should be valued. But another very important thing that we should be taking into consideration is balance. Most people are healthiest and happiest under a good balance of work and play, and we should accept it. The amounts needed of these elements changes from person to person, but we all need both in our lives.

A fast-paced, unbending society is something that forms through people’s wants, making it difficult, even for a community working together, to make a significant change. So my idea isn’t really one that can be realistically put in place. But a teenager can dream, can’t he? Societies usually change over time, and I believe that it’ll be when society grows too fast for comfort that we’ll start to slow down to a healthy pace of progress. But for now, in the real world, I think that it’s very plausible and beneficial to relax and slow down just a bit. Deep breaths, enjoying a fruit, saying hello to classmates, sharing things, sleeping a little more... things like that can really make a day, ease stress, and make people happier in general. And if even one person is happier than usual, things are more likely to go right in our world.