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Stress and the HSC
Oct. 21st, 2003 07:42 pmYay! I can view my journal again! (Our Internet connection was being screwy).
On a more sombre note, there was a report on 60 Minutes on Sunday on final school year exams. In this report they talked about the kind of pressure students get put under. Looking back on it I can certainly understand the stress it can cause. I was lucky I calmed myself down; in the first round of exams in our final year I got so stressed I wasn't eating or sleeping, but I was one of the lucky ones who could step out of my life for a moment and think, "wait, this isn't worth what I'm doing to myself." After that I studied (though not as much as some people) but I also made sure I got sleep and ate like normal. And I ended up alright (I needed 85/100 to get into my course at university and got 92).
But Hornsby Girls did put a lot of pressure on us. At our school no one ever spoke of anything other than university, as though there was nothing else, so you had to get the marks to get in. So the implication was always: if you didn't get the marks there was nothing else for you.
That 60 Minutes report also mentioned a girl I knew in year 11. We made friends when our schools went on ski-camp together and Passy and I were the only two girls doing snowboarding rather than skiing, so of course we immediately made friends. I remember her as a fun, slightly strange girl, definitely one of a kind because she was quite off the wall, but absolutely threw herself into everything she tried with enthusiasm.
A year later her picture was on the TV news when she disappeared because of the amounts of pressure in her final school year. The Telegraph newspaper said she left her house in the early hours of the morning, dressed in her graduation dress, and walked down to the beach near where she lived. Later her dress was found folded neatly by some stairs but Passy hasn't been seen since.
The report on 60 Minutes mentioned her and showed some of the artwork she'd been working on, a lot of it inspired by her home-country, Mexico.
REPORTER: Passy Reyes's family suspected there was something wrong even before she disappeared. Her mother Margaret and brother Chris say the 18-year-old student was obsessed, even overwhelmed, by her final-year studies.
MARGARET REYES: You know, I said don't go to school, because she was feeling pressure in school, don't go to school, just study, do homework and then go and present your assessments and if you think the school is giving you stress, don't just, you know, just take it easy. I, believe me, it got me as well, very badly.
REPORTER: Early one winter morning two years ago, Passy slipped out the front door of her home on Sydney's northern beaches and ran away, never to be seen again.
MARGARET REYES: She stopped going out and she stopped seeing her friends and to go to the movies and to do things with the girls, because she wanted to do really well in her HSC and she was doing a lot of work.
REPORTER: Chantelle Spaulding and Stephanie Fraser were Passy's best friends. Now they are reminded of their former classmate through her paintings.
On reflection now, when she started to withdraw into herself, I mean, they were signs, I guess, that things weren't going so well?
STEPHANIE FRASER: It's like she started to doubt herself a lot. You could see she was depressed by her behaviour. She was more in a shell to herself than not.
REPORTER: Any idea why then she became obsessed with her schoolwork?
STEPHANIE FRASER: They used to tell us, make it out like the HSC was the be-all and the end-all. If you didn't succeed in the HSC, you weren't going to succeed in life, and they told us we'd have to, like, study all the time and I think some people just may have taken it too seriously.
(From 60 Minutes transcript: http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2003_10_19/story_989.asp )
We know there is something wrong with an education system that gives its students more work than they can possibly handle. The problem is that many adults, even parents, don't realise the pressure students are under. Australia has the highest youth suicide rate in the world, and while this is due to many factors and not just school (such as unemployment and geographic isolation of small communities), final year exams account for a significant contibuting facor in 9% of youth suicides). You'd think those in power would realise that something is wrong and try to at least do something to address this, but they haven't yet and it doesn't look like they will soon either.
To those people who have yet to do their final year exams, don't stress too much about it. Please realise that there are other things out there that are worth more. Study, but don't let it take over your life. If you need some statistics as proof: every single student that has ever achieved 100% in their exams has said, "Study, but don't just study." If you study on the weekdays, go out with your friends or family on the weekends.
Good luck to Dave on his exams too.
On a more sombre note, there was a report on 60 Minutes on Sunday on final school year exams. In this report they talked about the kind of pressure students get put under. Looking back on it I can certainly understand the stress it can cause. I was lucky I calmed myself down; in the first round of exams in our final year I got so stressed I wasn't eating or sleeping, but I was one of the lucky ones who could step out of my life for a moment and think, "wait, this isn't worth what I'm doing to myself." After that I studied (though not as much as some people) but I also made sure I got sleep and ate like normal. And I ended up alright (I needed 85/100 to get into my course at university and got 92).
But Hornsby Girls did put a lot of pressure on us. At our school no one ever spoke of anything other than university, as though there was nothing else, so you had to get the marks to get in. So the implication was always: if you didn't get the marks there was nothing else for you.
That 60 Minutes report also mentioned a girl I knew in year 11. We made friends when our schools went on ski-camp together and Passy and I were the only two girls doing snowboarding rather than skiing, so of course we immediately made friends. I remember her as a fun, slightly strange girl, definitely one of a kind because she was quite off the wall, but absolutely threw herself into everything she tried with enthusiasm.
A year later her picture was on the TV news when she disappeared because of the amounts of pressure in her final school year. The Telegraph newspaper said she left her house in the early hours of the morning, dressed in her graduation dress, and walked down to the beach near where she lived. Later her dress was found folded neatly by some stairs but Passy hasn't been seen since.
The report on 60 Minutes mentioned her and showed some of the artwork she'd been working on, a lot of it inspired by her home-country, Mexico.
REPORTER: Passy Reyes's family suspected there was something wrong even before she disappeared. Her mother Margaret and brother Chris say the 18-year-old student was obsessed, even overwhelmed, by her final-year studies.
MARGARET REYES: You know, I said don't go to school, because she was feeling pressure in school, don't go to school, just study, do homework and then go and present your assessments and if you think the school is giving you stress, don't just, you know, just take it easy. I, believe me, it got me as well, very badly.
REPORTER: Early one winter morning two years ago, Passy slipped out the front door of her home on Sydney's northern beaches and ran away, never to be seen again.
MARGARET REYES: She stopped going out and she stopped seeing her friends and to go to the movies and to do things with the girls, because she wanted to do really well in her HSC and she was doing a lot of work.
REPORTER: Chantelle Spaulding and Stephanie Fraser were Passy's best friends. Now they are reminded of their former classmate through her paintings.
On reflection now, when she started to withdraw into herself, I mean, they were signs, I guess, that things weren't going so well?
STEPHANIE FRASER: It's like she started to doubt herself a lot. You could see she was depressed by her behaviour. She was more in a shell to herself than not.
REPORTER: Any idea why then she became obsessed with her schoolwork?
STEPHANIE FRASER: They used to tell us, make it out like the HSC was the be-all and the end-all. If you didn't succeed in the HSC, you weren't going to succeed in life, and they told us we'd have to, like, study all the time and I think some people just may have taken it too seriously.
(From 60 Minutes transcript: http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2003_10_19/story_989.asp )
We know there is something wrong with an education system that gives its students more work than they can possibly handle. The problem is that many adults, even parents, don't realise the pressure students are under. Australia has the highest youth suicide rate in the world, and while this is due to many factors and not just school (such as unemployment and geographic isolation of small communities), final year exams account for a significant contibuting facor in 9% of youth suicides). You'd think those in power would realise that something is wrong and try to at least do something to address this, but they haven't yet and it doesn't look like they will soon either.
To those people who have yet to do their final year exams, don't stress too much about it. Please realise that there are other things out there that are worth more. Study, but don't let it take over your life. If you need some statistics as proof: every single student that has ever achieved 100% in their exams has said, "Study, but don't just study." If you study on the weekdays, go out with your friends or family on the weekends.
Good luck to Dave on his exams too.
