Unrealistic Expectations For College Students

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In a word where success is everything, and failure is not accepted – how are the new generation of students holding up? The answer is that they’re not. When the mentality is if you’re not successful, you’re a failure it’s not a surprise that students are now more stressed than ever. Adults are now pushing students to over achieve unreal expectations, this impacts the students overall mental health and desire to learn; because of over praising, unreal academic expectations as well as increased stress surrounding extracurricular activities. Setting unrealistic expectations for students does not start later in their education; it starts in early infancy through overpraising. Over praising a child, especially a child with a low self-esteem,…show more content…
This impacts the mental health of students, through lowering their self-esteem and causing stress. For example, Gluke felt that the “constant comparison to other students lowered [her] self-esteem, and created higher expectations”, and “what they wanted [her] to do was not the same as what [she] wanted to do”. Through this she felt the relationship between her parents and herself become more, and more strained. The constant comparison of grades not only creates stress for the student, but it also creates stress on the parent-child relationship. Furthermore, parents (especially parents of Bayview SS students) are more determined to have their children go to a top university in order for them to have a successful career and ultimately a successful life. Through this obsession of universities and success, college has become a word associated with failure, and anyone unable to meet the university standards becomes a failure. This puts an increased amount of stress on students to study and work harder in order to obtain success. Through this notion, students have become more oriented around marks instead of knowledge. This is seen through the increase of students cheating on tests because “cheating no longer carries the stigma that it used to, and the increased competition for admission into universities has made students more willing to do whatever it takes to get the A.” (source: glass castle). Furthermore, achieving a personal best is not enough for many parents; many of them think that their child should be better and more successful than others. Like what Shawn Achor said, “you got good grades, now you have to get better grades…” The constant fight for marks and grades has left students extremely stressed as shown from a survey of 30, 000 students by the Globe and Mail; 90% of students said they felt overwhelmed by

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