A Look Inside Mahomet-Seymour High School: Academic comparison and pressure too much for some

This article is the third in a six-part series that addresses concerns five Mahomet-Seymour High Schoool students have about their environment at school. During an interview about school safety, these students discussed a multitude of issues that, they believe, lead to an unhealthy learning environment. These students come from different backgrounds and grades. To protect their identity, their names have been replaced with numbers. The Mahomet Daily shared all articles with district administration and gave 20 hours for comments. No comments were received. 

Links to the additional articles: Introduction Commentary, School Safety Article, Social Environment Article, Sexual Harassment/Sexting Article, The Corner Pieces

The definition of learning can be blurred.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines learn: “to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience.”

But for five academically diverse students at Mahomet-Seymour High School, learning at school is often full of pressure, stress and comparison.

“Because the school is so competitive, it gives me so much more anxiety to the point in classes and during tests, I am shaking, sweating,” Student 1 said. “I am so nervous. Not because I want myself to do well; it’s because I am worried that everyone around me will do better than I will.”

“Teachers put us in this mindset that half the class is here and half the class is (t)here; you’re supposed to be at this percentage. They just keep putting into our heads that it’s a competition and you need to be better than the person next to you.

“It’s not about being the best person you can be and being the best at school that you can be.”

Hailed as a destination school district, Mahomet-Seymour High School ranks 97th out of more than 1,500 high schools in Illinois by CollegeSimply based on its high test performance, average graduation rate and average AP course participation.

But students say the accolades of being in an elite school district with such attention comes at a cost.

Students at the top of their class often feel an immense amount of pressure to always excel above and beyond their peers while those who aren’t at the top feel like nothing they ever do or create will meet the standards of academic excellence.

“I think the dismissiveness of our school to the kids that don’t excel just makes them feel hopeless,” Student 2 said. “They just get forgotten about.”

“I don’t know if (teachers) just don’t see it or if they choose to ignore it, but they treat every student like they are at the same competitive level,” Student 3 said. “So when I go home and I come back to school the next day, and I don’t have my homework done, it’s not because I’m lazy, sitting at home, not doing anything, it’s because that’s my time to recover from that day of school.”

“Exactly,” Student 4 said.

Not only is the pressure of being academically excellent hard for these students, they also said that they feel like they are not allowed to have a life outside of school and extracurricular activities.

“I’m one of a handful of people in the honors program who has a job,” Student 1 said.

Student 1, who works several shifts throughout the week and during the weekend, said that the time not spent at school or at work is spent finishing homework.

“I don’t think (teachers) take into account people who work or have to take care of their parents, things like that,” Student 1 said. “I don’t think they are very inclusive in that way, and I don’t think they understand everything that is going on in a kid’s life.

“(Teachers) disregard it. If you don’t get your work done, that’s on you. (They) don’t care what the reason was, you deserve that F.”

Student 4 has friends who arrive home from work, and are up until 3 a.m. to finish their homework before they have to be at school the next day.

“With the amount of homework that they give us, it’s like we’re spending two hours on 15 math problems that we don’t know how to do because the teacher explained it to us in a way that only the top kids in the class would understand, and we don’t know how to teach it to ourselves,” Student 4 said.

“I think the amount of work we are given is detrimental because it makes us (just make answers up), then we aren’t getting the information from it that we should because we are just trying to go to bed,” Student 2 said.

Student 4 shared frustration in the feeling that teachers are not always available for additional instruction when a student has been absent or doesn’t understand the material.

“It’s overall really frustrating,” Student 4 continued. “We’re scared to go to our teachers. They are supposed to be our number one support system in our classroom, and we go to them, and they say there’s not much they can do, even though they are the teachers.”

“I think kids are more willing to spend two to three hours on an assignment they don’t understand than they are to ask their teacher for help,” Student 2 said.

“Or they’d rather not understand anything, copy everything down, than actually work on it and ask for help,” Student 1 said.

Students said that much of the work they do is on an individual basis, but that when teachers present the answers or the results of the work, “they are all compared anyway.”

“Sometimes that’s what makes it suck,” Student 1 said. “It’s very individual, and then we’re all compared. Sometimes it feels like you have no idea what you are doing.”

This comparison has led to this group of students often feeling like they are not enough just being where they are academically.

“I know that I’m not the most academically strong; it’s honestly just because I don’t care about school,” Student 4 said. “The school hypes up these kids who work extremely hard on their school work.”

Student 4 said the assembly at the beginning of the fall where students who received their academic letter are recognized in front of their parents and peers adds to the division.

“I do know that there are other kids who are trying really hard, but they just can’t seem to make it past a certain grade or GPA, and they are freaking out about it. Or even the kids who are on the top, they get a B- and they are crying in the bathroom for 45 minutes because they know their GPA will go down.”

“If you’re not at the top of your class, you’re basically nothing here,” Student 4 said.

“Which sucks for a lot of kids because it’s not their fault,” Student 1 said.

Students said the academic pressure has led to student anxiety, depression, self-harming, loneliness and suicidal thoughts.

Even the five students who were interviewed have caught themselves thinking or saying they will hurt themselves over a grade.

“(Students say), ‘If I get a bad grade on this test, I’m going to kill myself.’ That is so common,” Student 1 said.

“I say it all the time,” Students 2 and 3 said almost simultaneously.

“I hate that I say it, but I do,” student 3 continued.

“My mom caught me the other day,” Student 1 said. “She was like, ‘Why would you say that?’ And then I had to really think about it because it’s such a popular saying that I think we don’t realize (we are saying it).”

But the students don’t feel entirely hopeless.

They hope by using their voices that they will be able to help make changes in their academic environment now and for future students of Mahomet-Seymour High School.

Aside from wanting the collective academic pressure to subside, they would also like to see instruction that is geared towards the individual student, meeting them at all levels of instruction.

The lack of depth of education also concerns the students, as they know there are topics students need to understand. Although students are asked to think about many different ways to solve a math problem, they find that the information they need to be successful in day-to-day life is often overlooked.

While they understand the importance of college readiness, the students also want the school district to prepare them for the workplace and for the tasks that they will have to complete in life, like budgeting, balancing a checkbook or the importance of regular oil changes in their vehicles.

Student 1 thought the Economics curriculum would cover some of the more essential topics like budgeting, but found that the lecture on personal budgeting did not provide students with the hands-on learning they needed to fully understand the topic. The class then moved onto the cookie company project.

On the cusp of voting age, the students also voiced frustration about the adults in their lives not addressing how to register to vote, the process of voting or the deadlines associated with voting.

The students understand that when they leave the doors of Mahomet-Seymour, when the high school years are over, they will be in the same place as everyone else – the real world.

These students have a bigger question: Are they prepared for the reality they will face as they leave Mahomet-Seymour High School?