John+V’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

Colleges make school too competitive Most of us throughout our high school career have always taken the most difficult classes available regardless of the subject. But why do we take all these difficult classes? If our teacher asks us this question our answer will probably be because we enjoy the subject, to challenge ourselves mentally, or some other lie. The real reason why most of us take these classes is to boost our GPA and to improve our college transcript. There's nothing wrong with this reason. If your dream school is UCLA or Stanford or some other prestigious school you need to have a nearly perfect GPA and test scores to get in and even that might not be enough. So you can’t blame us for taking classes we may not be very interested in in order to improve our college applications and give us a chance at being accepted into our dream schools. You may think that the increased competitive atmosphere promoted by these ultra-selective colleges is beneficial to us students because it forces us to push ourselves mentally and expand our knowledge across multiple subjects. However, I would argue that this competitive atmosphere is in fact detrimental to our school environment. I’m sure almost everybody in here is taking at least one AP class on a subject they don’t care about and are never going to use in the future. So why do we waste hours every week doing homework or studying for a class that is pointless to us? We could be spending this time doing things much more beneficial to us like sleeping, practicing a sport if we play one, or spending time with friends and family. But, instead we have to waste our nights trying to learn the muscles of a mink or how to solve for the sides and angles of a triangle because this is what colleges want us to do. Additionally by taking all these classes we are limiting our ability to focus on and learn more about a particular subject that we are interested in and would like to pursue in the future as a major or job. Because of the time we spend studying for all of our other AP classes we don’t have much time left over to further explore subjects we are really interested in that we might want to major in. Colleges are unintentionally suppressing our ability to learn about things that will be important to us in the future by forcing us to spend our time taking classes we have no interest in just to boost our GPA. All these AP classes also take a huge toll on us mentally, causing us to become way more stressed than a high school student should be. Whether it be a math test, Physio practical, or History DBQ it seems like there is always something for us to study for and stress about. All the homework from our numerous AP classes adds up forcing us to spend hours a night studying. If you combine all this with extracurricular activities like sports or clubs you're left with very little free time to spend hanging out with friends and doing things for fun. In high school we are supposed to have fun and enjoy our lives, but instead we stay up late at night and at home on the weekends studying for a test or catching up on homework. All this homework can also have a negative impact on your sleep. We should be getting 9 hours of sleep a night, however, I would consider myself lucky to get 7 hours of sleep because I’m almost always up late doing homework. And I’m not alone in this, according to a 2014 study over 90% of teens are sleep deprived and I would venture to say that this number is even higher among AP students. This lack of sleep leads to increased mental health issues and hinders our ability to learn. I think the solution to this problem is for high schools to put a limit of how many AP classes students can take. This way students could focus more on courses they are interested in and plan on pursuing as a possible major or job after high school without being punished by not getting accepted into their dream schools. I want to grow old in an America where students choose their classes based off what they enjoy, not by what looks good on a college transcript. Where students don’t have to regularly stay up late at night doing homework or studying for a test. Where students can enjoy their lives and do well in school instead of choosing between the two.