Mental Breakdowns

Because Wikipedia is apparently all-knowing, I will now proceed to quote from it. A mental breakdown "refers to a specific acute time-limited reactive disorder, involving symptoms such as anxiety or depression, usually precipitated by external stressors." [x] 

I also read that a lack of sleep can cause stressors to become even more... erm... stressful, for lack of a better term. For example, your friend snapping at you one day might be insignificant, but your friend snapping at you when you haven't slept well for over a month... well, that's a little different.

Self-diagnosing is dangerous, but the internet makes it even worse. Life was much better when everything was just "a little cold." Nowadays, you can go into Google with a headache and a minute later be convinced you have a fatal brain tumor.

It's the way life works in this modern day and age. We all live in a constant panic.

At any rate, I digress. Now, if you're like me and you've been to high school, you're offered multiple choices. You can either be qualified as a 'Regs' kid, an 'Honors' kid, or an 'AP' student. Usually, someone will recommend you take AP classes, because, they say, the work will pay off, colleges will like you, etc, etc. 

What they don't tell you is that the Regs kids are always happier. It's true--look around you. Those kids that are grinning like they just came back from the best day of their lives, those are the Regs kids, the ones that have the luxury of blow-off classes and--dare I say it?-- free time. 

You see, free time is a foreign concept to AP students. Why? Because AP students have the workload, the test difficulties, the endless essays, and on top of that they have everyone expecting infinitely more from them. No matter what, the AP students will be faced with the pressure of their best friends getting full rides to Harvard, the legacy of that one Glorious Student who walked around with a Halo over his/her head and got fought over by All The Ivy League Schools. 

All of them.

The goal of the AP student is to secure their future, not enjoy their nows. They live on the constant promise of sleeping in on Saturdays, they count the days down to vacations, they don't even bother thinking about plans because their only plan is sleep. 

We all find solace in something, us AP students. With some, it's the internet, that world that seems full of people who understand. For others, its worse things, substance abuse, self-harm, disorders, anxiety...

Then there's the mental breakdowns. They happen without warning, usually are irrational and inexplicable. Some end in tears, some end in laying quietly in our rooms unable to think lest we break down again, and still others end in stupid decisions. It's comforting to think we all have them, though probably not entirely accurate.

So, maybe the question we want to ask our students when they go into high school is: do you want to be successful, or do you want to be happy? Because apparently you can't be both, and maybe if I'd been asked I would have chosen differently.