August 17, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Stress is the new normal

by Alexandria Rocha

oa Bruhis can't wait for her senior year at Gunn High School.

She is scheduled to take band, auto shop, four advanced placement classes and a calculus course at Foothill College. She has a job that is part life guard and part swim and diving instructor. In her spare time, she wants to help her dad finish building a car -- a '70s Toyota Land Cruiser. She hopes to finish her homework each night by 2 a.m.

With that kind of a workload and such a relaxed attitude, Noa sounds more like a hip, well-adjusted college student than a 16-year-old who notes she will be 17 in October. She shrugs off the notion, however, that she is anything but a typical teenager.

"I don't feel any more mature than anyone else," she said. "I still feel like a kid. Definitely."

In the past few years, the spotlight on teenagers has gotten brighter. In Palo Alto, the focus has mostly been about the level of stress local students endure to earn high marks and admittance into the country's top-tier colleges.

A 2001 book called "Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students," by Stanford Lecturer Denise Clark Pope, created an acute awareness in Palo Alto about this issue. School administrators, teachers and parents banded together on a mission to curb it, to "redefine success" as they put it, and to relieve some of the pressure.

Besides a few evening workshops, some surveys and a new after-school yoga class, not a lot has changed for the kids since the fervor began. And they haven't really noticed.

"For a lot of kids in this area, doing so many things is the normal kid experience," said Garrett Morton, 14, an incoming Paly freshman. "Having lived here all my life, I don't know what experiences other kids my age have."

Although Noa will be a senior and Garrett a freshman, they are similar in how they approach school and the high expectations they put on themselves.

They both like challenges, hard classes and extra-curricular activities. When they talk about relaxing, it's reading. They get stressed out about big projects, but earn A's. Both show strong interests in certain hobbies, but don't know what they want to be when they grow up.

For Garrett, school has so far been easy. With a 4.0 grade point average, he excels in all his classes. He is planning to be a serious student in high school and he's looking forward to the plethora of challenging courses.

He isn't, however, too excited about the social events that will come along with it. In middle school, he didn't go to any dances, except for a short jaunt he made to the graduation celebration.

"When one of my friends dragged me in for a few minutes, my glasses fogged up," he said. "It didn't really improve my view on them."

Noa and her friends on the other hand are already talking about homecoming week.

"It is so fun to see a mob of red on the last day of homecoming week because everyone is dressed up," she said.

Noa admits, however, that she is bored more often than not on the weekends. Besides catching up with homework, bowling, mini-golf and the movies have been the weekends' hot plans.

This year, even with such a hefty load of AP courses (she wants to get as much out of the way for college as possible), Noa said she is taking this year more in stride than the previous three. She said her freshman year was the worst simply because of the stories she heard about Gunn's stellar students. She became easily stressed out.

"I was scared to come to Gunn because it's so high achieving and everyone has such high expectations," she said. "But, maybe it's because I was so scared that I ended up having more fun than I thought I would."

Both Garrett and Noa said they put the most pressure on themselves. And even though both are "A" students involved in music and other activities, they both get disappointed in their performances.

"I'm the kind of person that believes there is always room for improvement, so even when I do well I tend to feel I could do better," Noa said.

Garrett added, "If you aim high, you're going to fall short sometimes."

Noa is thinking about attending a University of California campus, while Garrett hasn't narrowed it down, but knows he wants to go to a good college.

Both are also pragmatic.

"Because I don't know what I want to do with my life, I don't really have a good idea of what I want my college to be good at," Garrett said.

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