Pop culture often characterizes high school as being filled with various small-picture teenager worries. While many of these conflicts, including caste-like social structures, are nonsense and should be brushed off as unimportant, one of them, obsession with grades, remains valid.

With the number of competitive college applicants increasing by the thousands, every little opportunity one has to improve an application feels imperative. With many unknowns and lottery-like odds during the process, it feels comforting that a piece of the application, the grades, are at a high level.

Stress for grades is a real issue. Of the students polled, 38 out of 45 students ranked their stress as a 6 or above. However, it feels like many faculty members see this stress as unnecessary. This feels dismissive of the student experience.

High school can be a scary time, and students often look out into the empty unknown void of college and feel overwhelmed and inadequate. It can be quite difficult to stress and obsess over work that feels important, only to hear from respected members of the community how little it actually means. Yes, these members have years of experience and have seen a plethora of students figure things out and end up happy, but that still doesn’t make us feel any better. In that moment, the comforting attempt by adults does little. Students want their struggles acknowledged and their feelings heard, not diminished. This could mean that instead of trying to broaden the situation to big picture endings, adults simply listen and nod.