Pressure, I’m sure that rings a bell for every young adult out there. It’s common that the word is thrown around in most teenagers’ conversation from time to time without much thought to it but why? Why are we always so pressured? Why does it feel like school, parent’s expectations and our personal aspirations are the things that slowly chip away at our mental health? And lastly the most important question, how can we stop feeling so pressured? These are all the things I will be discussing today. As a teenager there are so many decisions in life that put us all under lots of stress especially in my opinion the main route of those stressful problems: education. Now I’m not implying that education is a trap that only holds problems and nothing else, because for a fact it’s not, it’s something that empowers us with opportunities and gives us the knowledge to be a better generation. However that all being said education is in a way an idea of juxtaposition. Either you’re satisfied with what you’re achieving or you’re slowly realising that your parents, your teachers and maybe in the back of your mind you yourself feel that you aren’t good enough, that you can do better. You’ve worked so hard for the grade that you achieved yet your ears are ringing with that one phrase “you can do better.” So the next test is looming and you’ve worked yourself into frenzy so much so that you’ve lost sleep and are just about ready to collapse. You take the test and come out of it feeling anxious and sick with worry due to the hard work you’ve put in that may not correlate to your results. The next day you get your results back and look at the B and not the A you hoped to make your teachers proud with and most importantly your parents. That grade stays indented in your head all day making me you feel like a failure, making you feel like you should’ve worked harder and that you’re not good enough for your own personal aspirations which in turn greatly affects your confidence. This is just one of the ways that pressure on young people throughout their educational careers is perceived. Now moving on from what could potentially pressurise young people, I will be discussing the serious and often dangerous consequences of what pressure can cause. Take South Korea for example for many people it’s perhaps known for its hugely popular k-pop bands and k-dramas and its overall culture. However perhaps what many people are unaware of is that South Korea has an almost rigorous routine for its students and how well they study and achieve in their exams. One mark could possibly ruin the lives of young students in South Korea which is perhaps unsurprisingly and unfortunately why the country has the highest rate of suicide in the world and is the fastest growing rate for 10-19 year olds. This devastating fact is precisely a huge consequence of how the almost ridiculous amount of pressure being inflicted upon teens in one of the most educationally elite country’s’ in the world can cause such a horrific outcome. Now moving on from the horrible impacts of pressure I will be discussing how students can perhaps learn to deal with the expectations they're under. One way could be to possibly talk to teachers or a school councillor. This is because they most likely have a vast array of experience with handling teenagers who are dealing with the same things so can relate to your problems and help you feel more secure with your academic potential. Overall I believe that there is a huge amount of pressure being forced on young students which can easily lead to negative consequences but to avoid them we can teach teens in school how to manage the pressure. This can be done by talks given in school by councillors workshops etc. which can have a positive impact.
