Perfection is Necessary for All

By Josh Lancman ‘24
    With the juniors halfway through the self-defined most difficult year of our lives, many wonder: how is the class of 2024 so devoid of anxiety?

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The juniors are currently thriving, not requiring any special treatment, mental health days, guidance counseling or anxiety medication. We promise. We’re totally doing fine. We’re just deep in the grind right now and are really tired and don’t have time to talk about it, seriously. 
    Most juniors have invented creative ways of managing stress. “I like to project my own stress onto objects, specifically musical instruments,” said junior Yoni Ashkenazi. “Whenever I’m feeling anxious or depressed, I destroy pianos to get it off my chest. I love the sound of their screams,” he continued while disemboweling a Yamaha electric keyboard.
    “I like to take my stress out by throwing my money away in the casino,” said self-proclaimed free-thinker junior Doron Finkel, calling in from Atlantic City. 
    “I manage stress by causing others anxiety,” said self-identified loan shark and ‘Boss’ junior Zach Siegel. “By the way, where was Doron calling in from?”
Because of this, many teachers have come up with creative ways to help their students manage stress. “I help the juniors in my class manage stress through satire and gaslighting,” said physics teacher Mr. Ruhl. “If you can convince a student they’re stupid, they’ll never be anxious about not knowing the correct answer!”
    “This question is causing me stress,” said confirmed insomniac Giselle Weiss, being asked how she manages stress. “Josh Lancman causes me stress too, I fear that guy,” she said. 
Many juniors do not even believe that stress exists. “People usually ask, ‘what are your coping mechanisms to deal with stress?,’” said junior Talia Perlstein, squeezing multiple stress balls with thirty tabs open on her two laptops. “The answer is nothing, there isn’t time to figure out ways to de-stress. I’m too busy spending multiple hours a week on my school work on top of all the SAT work to find ways to cope with my stress. I kind of just deal with it.” 
    “I think stress is a hoax,” said junior and confirmed flat-earther Yuval Krispin. “It is a hoax made by health teachers to make lesson plans about.”
    “I think stress is only real if you cave into it. You just shouldn’t believe in the stress. If school is stressful, don’t come to school,” said junior Agam Rejwan, speaking from home. 
    Personally, I don’t care all that much about stress. I’m not that anxious. I woke up this morning perfectly happy and content with every little thing in my life, although I was tired, but I couldn’t go back to sleep because I had school, and if I didn’t go to school or I came late I would miss some really important classes, and I would have to catch up on whatever information I missed and get someone else’s notes, and then if I missed a test I would have to make it up soon after or the stuff it's on would totally slip out of my mind, and I do have multiple tests today, so I really can’t miss today or come late or anything like that. It’s just not a possibility. 
And then if I do go to school while exhausted, what if I do badly on the tests I have today? Then my grades will slip and I’ll have to do extra credit to make them back up and I’ll probably end up getting a B+ and failing the class. And then there’s all the random bits of homework that’ll get assigned throughout the day, so I’ll have to stay up late again tonight which means that I’ll be going through this same process tomorrow morning. And of course there’s all the club work that I have to do- and a math test tomorrow because there’s always a math test, isn’t there? And there’s always something else that comes up. I can’t ask for extensions on any assignments because then I’m failing and I’m a failure, and I don’t have time to go to office hours because I have 371 different clubs I’m part of so that I can list enough things on my College application, because if I don’t get into Harvard or Princeton than I will never succeed in life, and if I don’t have my dream job and am famous by the time I’m in my thirties than everything I have ever accomplished doesn’t matter because I need to be the best. Why?- because I need to feel superior to everyone around me, and I need to have made a few billion by then so that I can become President of the United States by the time I’m 35, otherwise I’m a failure and a disappointment, and basically I need to do everything well in high school, get a perfect grade in every class, do my 371 extracurriculars, be valedictorian, and essentially be the best at everything because if I’m not then I’m a failure, and so perfection is necessary or I will die alone. 
But again, I’m not that anxious. I’m fine. We’re all fine. Everybody’s fine.

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