Written By: Daryn Tarasewicz

Being a student at CCA means grinding 24/7. Seven hours of passively listening and completing assignments, four hours of homework and studying at home, maybe even four tests a week. Coming in as freshman, many of us accepted this as what high school would be like, even chose to go here because of this. But have we ever looked twice at our circumstances, and truly contemplate whether it’s supposed to be like this? Is this system really benefitting us?

We’re told by administrators and counselors that high school is a time for self-exploration and personal development. It no doubt should be. Our teenage years are one of the most transformative, and as we prepare for adulthood and higher studies, it’s important to explore not only what interests us, but what brings us joy and truly excites us. But the academic system and overall culture at CCA is designed for the complete opposite: it’s designed for performance. It’s designed for achievement.

Haarika Kota is a junior. This semester, she’s taking AP US History, Anatomy and Physiology, AP Lang, and AP Physics. Her schedule is extremely rigorous, but considering CCA students take nearly twice as many AP exams as the national average, it’s not unheard of. The problem with the way CCA academic classes are designed, Haarika argues, is that this desire to explore is completely squashed by rigid structures and high stakes outcomes dictated not only by peer pressure but the way AP classes and the 4×4 schedule is structured. “In AP Physics, it’s pretty common for me to have two quizzes and a unit test every week, and since exams are worth total of sixty percent in the gradebook, my entire grade is dependent on a single test. The fun of learning is replaced with the stress of one letter grade.” With this schedule, Haarika has five tests a week, and as result, she is on constant autopilot mode. She starts homework at 5:15 pm, works until 7 pm, eats dinner with her family, then resumes homework and studies until midnight. “In my freshman and sophomore year, I developed this mentality of ‘do or die.’ My studying has to result in me performing well. I was only 13 when I developed this mindset, which really affected my mental state when it came to non academic things. I felt like I had to perform at my highest even for things I did for fun.” The emphasis on clubs and conservatory programs at CCA has done a lot to shift the culture away from performance and encourage students to follow their passions outside the classroom. But what about simply being a teenager? Being able to step back from academics and even extracurriculars to just get outside during the weekend is a rarity for many. “On the weekends, I have dance, and the rest of my time is spent studying for tests and the ACT. I’m always locked up in my room and the only time I talk with my family is the 30 minutes I have during dinner.”

This kind of constant autopilot survival mode has become normalized at CCA. But what many people fail to realize is that the pressure to keep up with this relentless pace doesn’t just affect short-term mental health. It has a permanent, damaging effect on long-term development. The prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for impulse control and long-term planning, is still developing until around age 25. Overloading it with rapid-fire, high-stakes testing can hinder the ability to move information into stable, long-term memory and forces students into short-term cramming cycles. That’s why we forget much of the things we learned from a class less than a semester later, not to mention develop actual intelligence or problem solving skills for careers and the real world. Furthermore, constant test anxiety and heavy workloads keep the body’s “fight or flight” system activated without rest and floods the brain with cortisol. Prolonged exposure to high cortisol levels can physically alter brain architecture, permanently shrinking the hippocampus, which handles memory and emotional regulation.

This leads to the question: does CCA truly prepare us for college and the real world, or does it merely train us to perform under unsustainable conditions?

From an outside perspective, it’s easy to wonder why students would subject themselves to such environment in the first place. The simple answer is one we all know: familial and cultural expectations, peer pressure, etc. But looking through a larger, socioeconomic lens, the deeper answer lies in the American job market. Only 9.1% of full time workers without a bachelor’s degree earn more than $100k a year, and over 95% of job openings require postsecondary education, which is a 40% increase from just twenty years ago. Along with rising inflation and the hyper-competiviness of the modern job market, many high school students develop this anxiety that leads them to believe that financial security cannot be secured without acceptance into an elite university. And elite universities means extreme high school rigor and top-tier performance.

So what do we do? Now that midterms are finished, how do we find the right middle ground that provides the foundation for flourishing, not burnout? Mr. Brown, one of CCA’s AP Lang teachers, has the answer. “Leave enough time to do the right thing,” he says. It’s a family motto that reaffirms the importance of staying in tune with what we value, whether it’s family, financial security, or following one’s passions. Mr. Brown argues that giving ourselves the freedom to find these values on our own and using it to shape how much we want to push ourselves relieves so much of the pressure that is felt when other people define who we are. In reality, we have more control over what we do with our lives than we think, and every step we take towards our own definition of success should be dictated by us and no one else. We must reject the notion that exhaustion is a badge of honor. We have the power to rewrite the CCA experience for ourselves, and by aligning our actions and identity with our own principles rather than external validation, we can transform our education from a rigid checklist into a meaningful journey of growth.