Overachievers Exceeds All Expectations!

I wish that this book had been written when my friends and I were in high school, because it really struck home. In Overachievers: The Secret Life of Driven Kids, author Alexandra Robbins shadows a handful of teenagers in their junior and senior years of high school. She learns about their struggles in applying to colleges, including grades, SAT scores, the application process itself, what extracurricular activities they should join and how these students balance all of those with their own social lives, their expectations of themselves and their parents' expectations of them with the college application process. Ms. Robbins followed students at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, as they attempted to cope with their demanding lives. Ms. Robbins' theory was that these teenagers have too much homework, in too many classes and that there is way too much pressure on them to succeed and be perfect while they're going about it.

These students' struggles were often sad and scary. Julie, a senior, was losing her hair due to stress. Frank, a college freshman at Harvard, was subjected by an overbearing mother to emotional and verbal abuse while he was living at home. Ryland had severe panic attacks during school. Audrey vomits before going to school because she is petrified of being less than perfect. All of these students suffered from severe sleep deprivation. All of these physical symptoms were a result of the drive to get into a top college.

What Robbins did successfully was follow the students in her book around and get them to trust her enough to discuss her experiences with them. This is not a skill that many of us have and Robbins has mastered it. I was able to engage with the students and, oftentimes, saw aspects of my own experiences and personality traits reflected back to me. I was able to sympathize with the students that she followed around. Because of her ability to get these students to open up, I was able to connect with them and see them as human, as opposed to a dry, study.

I appreciated that Ms. Robbins tried to link what was occurring at Whitman to a national trend. Within chapters, she would alternate between the specific stories of the students that she followed and what was going on nationally. However, the transitions were not smooth. It was obvious that Ms. Robbins did extensive research in writing this book.

I also loved Robbins' writing style. It makes the stories as well as the numbers that are interspersed throughout the study accessible. It was not dry at all; at places, it was more like reading a journal, or memoir than a study of high school students.

This is a must read!