Meredith Luchs, junior
Do you think that NCHS cares whether or not you’ve had a good day? Not the teachers, not your classmates, but NCHS as a whole? Are they invested in your educational and emotional fulfillment and growth as a person? Too often, I get the sense that students feel like they don’t matter. Sure, their grades matter, their SAT and ACTs matter, their clubs matter, all the tangible aspects of their life that act as proof of their achievement “matters”. But too often, students are fast-tracked from one step to the next. Our school culture is suffering an epidemic rooted in apathetic authority, and cultivating a demoralized student body. We’re expected to approach our responsibilities and studies like adults, but our opinions, feelings, and initiative in personal and societal development is not respected as an adult’s are.
As a student at NCHS, I can personally guarantee that the most valuable thing at our school is not our SAT scores, our GPAs, College Acceptance Rates, nor our Clubs, but the morally upstanding virtue and passion exhibited by students. These are students who volunteer not for transcripts but the simple fulfillment of taking concern for others’ problems. These are students who take initiative, who are inquisitive, and truly interested in opportunities to engage with the world on a critical level. These are students who, upon reading Rousseau, will directly quote him in avoiding household chores. Students who, inspired by Angelou, appeal to the core of longing with resounding words of poetry. Students who, after witnessing cruelties, stand up by writing speeches, leading protests, and even utilizing their personal social media accounts in attempt to stir up discussion and spark change, putting their necks out in the name of betterment of the community. Although outlandish at times, the student body is one that will implore its knowledge for the betterment of the World.
This initiative, of course, carries on into the work ethic at NCHS. “You look tired” has become the new “What’s up”, and “I pulled an all-nighter” is the new “Not much”. Working through free periods is not unusual, nor working from the time one gets home to the time one goes to bed, nor even waking up in the early AM’s to finish homework on account of being tired beyond the point of functioning the night before. In it’s own right, it pays off. We may not be maximizing our time, considering that much of work scientifically cannot be quality work, but it pays off. We become well-informed citizens who look good on paper and sound good in interviews. As my history teacher puts it, “to be burnt out, means you have to have been on fire.” And we sure are, we’re students on fire.
Yet if such students continue to burn out over their schoolwork and are given no time to refuel or reoxidize, it is inevitable that the hard work ethic will be entirely smothered. Our beloved Ms. Timmis showed us that the best way to approach a growing mind is to befriend it, yet why do we insist on forcibly working to “keep students in line”? If we do not recognize students as mature young adults, and provide them an atmosphere in which their thoughts can be heard, and their spirit cultivated, in which we let them know that we truly, truly care, even the most morally upstanding students will build a resentment for the system that has become more antagonistic than cooperative. Students and Teachers cannot thrive in such an environment; the SAT scores, GPAs, College Acceptance Rates, clubs and excellent faculty will become only an enfeebled echoing of their full capacity. It would be not only well founded but entirely imperative for the administration to readdress the manner in which they approach the students of NCHS. While we’ve often been praised for our maturity, being called the “future leaders of the world”, it’s time to allow us to start embracing some of our capability.
It’s time to develop students’ freedom at NCHS; for us to develop our voice, let us speak, for us to sharpen our eager ears, give us a chance to listen, for us to understand heights, let us fall, for us to grow, trust us with more room.
