Editorial: Don’t overfill your plate

These days, high school students so commonly complain about overstretched workloads and… These days, high school students so commonly complain about overstretched workloads and underutilized pillows that we often consider their griping as cliché  — and subsequently dismiss it. But as one documentary suggests, we should perhaps be a bit more considerate.

The documentary, titled “Race to Nowhere,” is a film that, according to an article in The New York Times, “portrays the pressures when schools pile on hours of homework, coaches turn sports into year-round obligations and parents pack their children off to music and computer camps during summer.”

Focusing on how an increasing number of parents and students, especially in affluent areas, treat high school purely as a resumé-building exercise, the film  describes “boys who drop out of high school from pressure, girls who suffer stress-induced insomnia” and students who decide to borrow friends’ prescriptions of Adderall  — a psychomotor stimulant — to focus on an overloaded plate of commitments.

Although sporting a small advertizing budget, the documentary has nevertheless received a groundswell of grassroots support, from students and parents alike. Earning $6.3 million already at the box office, “Race to Nowhere” has been privately screened by community groups and local Parent Teacher Associations, which sell tickets alongside the filmmakers.

Ballooning application rates are making top-tier colleges more restrictive, and school districts are increasingly forcing higher collegiate expectations onto students so as to boost land value and, by extension, tax revenue. These factors, among others, are clearly turning high school environments into hotbeds of unhealthy competition, where students are taught they need to do everything to “get in.”

But don’t be mistaken; this tendency toward over-involvement often does not end by getting accepted into college.

As a tough job market knocks threateningly on their door, many undergrads struggle to pad their resumés in the same way these high school students do. By cramming activities and classes into their schedules, some students never shake the desire to do it all, and they’re not better off for it.

Though a college education, especially an undergraduate experience in the liberal arts, should encourage students to explore the many facets of their interests and abilites, in college there is a point  — which can be reached very quickly  — at which a resumé-padding exercise just collapses.

Those who approached high school in a do-everything-until-you-literally-drop fashion will find that college activities require a level of focus, commitment and zeal that vastly surpasses that of former activities, and stringing together too many things is simply unsustainable. More people should understand that “well-rounded” can also translate into a person who focuses on one life passion, performs a few hours of volunteering on the side and gets nine hours of sleep per night.

Employers and graduate programs are looking for excellence in a few key skills, not necessarily mediocrity in many.