Checklists

I went to Westwood High School. I know this means nothing to you. It's about as familiar to most of the UT campus as Earth was to ET. But I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that the school itself was, for me, an unpleasant experience. I loved my peers, and there were a handful of teachers who inspired me, but the entire atmosphere of the place was akin to a childhood nightmare.

The front of my high school. You'd never know how ridiculous it was by the look of it, would you?

http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/8/2/2/5/9/ar122573592395228.jpg

Westwood houses an International Baccaulareaute Honors Program that draws the best and brightest as far as students go from all over the district. However, wikipedia notes that "Westwood's IB academy also has what some consider to be negative effects on the student population. As highly talented and giftedstudents transfer to Westwood from across the Round Rock Independent School District to join the IB program, a distinct disadvantage drops on to regular students since their class rank is not disaggregated from these magnet enrollees. As a result, the class ranks of many otherwise strong students (often carrying a significant number of honors or AP courses) drop dramatically in relation to where they would place in nearby local schools given their performance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood_High_School_(Williamson_County,_Texas)#International_Baccalaureate).

Everyone knows it. Everyone is bitter about it. There's a facebook group called "you know you went to Westwood when...". One person finishes this statement with "You make a 4.9 and finish 183/635 with a 1300 SAT yet don't get into a certain college because your too far out of the top 10%." There's are many other, less tactful endings to this sentence that say much the same thing. And yes. I know that getting into college is about more then just your class rank. But when the Texas Tribune is reporting that in "2008, 81 percent of incoming freshman at UT Austin were admitted under the top 10 percent rule," (http://www.texastribune.org/topics/top-ten-percent-rule/) people start to get a little twitchy about how competative Westwoods academics are.

But the detrimental effect of overly-competitive academics of Westwood goes farther in the "getting into college" nightmare then just by affecting class rank. Because students are struggling to stay afloat in the cut-throat academic world of Westwood, they are unable to pursue passions such as athletics and community-oriented volunteer efforts. As the article said, to get into college (and to survive in the hectic world of today) you have to "strive for balance" (Rimer). But at Westwood, just as in the article, "balance is out the window" (Rimer). Colleges want you to do everything, and Westwood makes that impossible. In addition, because students don't have time for extraccuriculars, the caliber of extraccuriclar opportunities at the school suffers. In the same facebook group ("you know you went to Westwood when...") one alum finishes the statement with "we were the only football team in America that (literally) had to climb over a fence and cross a busy street to get to practice." Athletics are OBVIOUSLY not number one.

Oh, that mighty Westwood orange...

http://images.maxpreps.com/Gallery/0tv1rg-fIUCEx4ZREB1o_g/XK_JzIKlcUKQ6I1CQ_BJ2g/vista_ridge_westwood_forster_zeitz_austin_forster_zejtz_austin_boys_football_image.jpg

And then there's the teachers. Good lord, I feel for those teachers. There they are, many young and optimistic, trying to instill in their students a love for learning, and what do they get? A bunch of grade-whoring teenagers out for the "A". They basically have three choices:

1. Leave. This is the "save-yourself" choice, the once that will enable you to avoid getting sucked into the whirlpool of negativity that clouds Westwood's classrooms. If I were a teacher, I'd definitely go with this one.

2. Stay and drown. Become that teacher that trains students only to pass the AP test, who's grading rubrics leave no room for creativity so as to avoid getting chastised for grading unfairly, who is known as "boring" but still experiences an influx of students because you're also known for being an "easy grader".

3. Stay and be unreasonable. Give so much work that sleep deprivation is your students only option. Be known as a difficult grader who doesn't care if the students pass or fail. Revel in your reputation as "impossible". These teachers are ridiculous. They are also the best teachers Westwood has, because if you're willing to stay and teach at Westwood, truly teach, it means you REALLY love what you're doing.

We always knew Ms. D, the English teacher I had junior and senior year, was eventually going to go with option one. She was too much of a free spirit to stay for long. Recently I found out she's leaving next year. But I remember, distinctly, during the Fall rush of rec letter requests senior year. How she sat us down and told us seriously that she was worried about us. We scoffed, of course. Worried? About her IB, honors english class? We were fine. We had it under control. We were headed for great things, for sprawling Ivy League Campuses and famous professors, for universities full of brilliant minds and power.

Princeton: an example of the type of college the people in my class felt they were destined for.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~wxu/princeton/wallpaper/spring/princeton_spring.jpg

"No. I'm worried about you because too many of you are living life like it's a checklist, and you're ticking things off the list, and one day, you're going to tick off that last thing and realize that that list isn't even what you wanted."

I remember this. And I remember looking around the class after she said this at the genius-caliber kids surrounding me, hoping desperately that something, ANYTHING she'd said had sunk in.

She'd hit, of course, on what I consider the biggest problem at Westwood, and, on a larger scale, the entire college application process: that, with their unreasonable academic and extracurricular expectations, they suck out your soul.

I've been trying to figure out lately where this problem comes from. I know it sounds like I'm blaming it on my high school. And towards the end there I mentioned college applications. But I think, honestly, that the problem is within ourselves, the young people. We let ourselves get caught up in the "checklist cycle" and forget to make sure that the checklist we're ticking off from includes things we actually care about.

What's on your checklist?

http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/chscontracts/newsletter/summer2009/images/pics/checklist.jpg

However, the article on perfection hints that parents contribute to the cycle as well, with a certain Mr Mobley admitting that he is "not above" (Rimer) the perfectionism that the youth of today suffer from. Maxine Hong Kingston, in her novel The Woman Warrior, also alludes to this. In her first chapter, "No Name Woman," she speaks of her aunt "who killed herself" (Kingston, 3) after giving birth to an illegitamite child. Though the villagers reaction to the birth was much stronger and violent, Kingston asserts that it was the families vow to "leave no marker for her anywhere" (Kingston, 15) and contention that she had "never been born" (Kingston, 14) that caused her aunt to commit suicide: it was there inability to cope with imperfection that pushed her over the edge. Later, in her chapter called "White Tigers," Kingston shows how deeply she desired the approval of her parents, indicating that their approval could only be won with a perfection she was unable to achieve because she was " a bad girl" (Kingston, 46), aka simply a female. In the first half of the chapter, Kingston paints a picture of her ideal childhood, one where her parents would "sacrifice a pig to the gods" (Kingston, 45) because they were so thrilled she had returned from her trials safely. Then she transitions into her actual childhood, one where, despite striving for perfection, despite "getting straight A's" (Kingston, 47) and going away to the prestigious college of Berkeley, despite trying to stick to her parents checklist, she was still not living up to her parents expectations. The result was that she rebelled, and not in a productive way, purposely "[burning] the food when [she cooks]" and "[letting] the dirty dishes rot" (Kingston, 47). Herein Kingston hits on a central danger with perfectionism, whether its root be in parents or children. As the article on perfecionism notes, not all children rebel, pointing to Esther, who Mr. Mobley say has a "character sealed in some fundamental way," (Rimer) as an example. But how are you supposed to rebel against perfectionism? But not being perfect. By messing up. By throwing away the checklist entirely. Yes, some kids are going to figure out you can just rewrite the checklist, and rebel in this way. But there are those, like Kingston, who might let the checklist ruin their lives, dictating their actions not because they work to check things off the list but because they actively choose to avoid checking things off at any cost.

Kingston's toast (most likely)http://phoenix.fanster.com/theshowtobenamedlater/files/2009/09/burnt-toast-2.jpg In the first half of her chapter called "Shaman," Kingston speaks of letting her mothers life. After reading about her a few of her mothers trials and tribulations, about how she dealt with the death of her two children who "could already walk" (Kington, 60) "did secret studying" (Kingston, 64) to keep from being ridiculed at school, and found a way to become respected in her own right through her profession, despite being a woman, I feel like part of the pressure Kingston felt to be perfect was not just a desire to live up to her mother's expectations but also a desire to live up to her mother's life, so full of heartache and hard-earned triumph.

OK. I changed my mind. Maybe it's not just the fault of the mindless, checklist-following troubled youth that perfectionism is so rampant. I think that its' a combination of factors, factors that are different for every person. However, I still believe that ending perfectionism is on the backs of my peers and myself. Parents and colleges are supposed to push us to be our best, and they're doing so in the best way they know how. However, we have to be the ones to decide what "the best" actually is.