My trip to the Philippines and Thailand reads like a travel magazine. I saw the West Philippine Sea sparkle as the sun hit the waves, the historical architecture of Vigan City, grand temples made of gold in Bangkok. What I saw during that trip is probably someone’s desktop wallpaper.

But one thing plagued my mind during the entire trip, something that made it so I couldn’t fully appreciate the beauty of what I saw: the gnawing anxiety that I was missing school. A lot of school.
 

I knew that my trip would extend past winter break and that I would end up missing two weeks of classes. I made all the preparations for this, I communicated with my teachers, got the work I needed to do in advance, and submitted my prearranged absence form. All so I could go on this trip worry-free.
 

For the weeks that aligned with winter break, it was just that: worry-free. After classes had resumed, I checked Canvas every other day and made a list of what I had to do when I got back.
 

With each school day that passed my list grew, as did my fear. Was I missing too much school? Could I really catch up and keep my grades up before the semester ends?

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Then, two days before my flight back to the U.S., I got an email from Canvas. 

 

“Your assignment has been graded.”
 

I opened the email as soon as I got it. What assignment? I checked the grade.

 

0.5 - Missing.

 

The alarm bells went off and I spiraled. My teacher would definitely revise the grade when I did submit it but I was panicking. I downloaded all my assignments so I could do them on the 13 hour flight. But what if that wasn’t enough? Was my grade going to drop? Was my GPA going to drop? That night I couldn’t sleep. School haunted my thoughts and without a doubt, would’ve haunted my nightmares too.

 

A straight-laced, straight-A student is worried about her grades in a school thousands of miles away. Why is that?

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Some of it has to do with my own personality. I am a perfectionist, a procrastinator, and anxiety-prone. Any time away from school is too much and I have done it at the worst time possible: the end of the first semester of Junior year. The whole situation was a catastrophe waiting to happen. 

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But the other part has to do with my (somewhat hot) take on modern schooling. Students, especially Juniors, shoulder too much pressure.

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Pressure to do good in school so you get into a good college so you get a good job so you have a good life and don’t end up living on the streets. There was no room for error, my life hinged on an essay or lab or test. In a Junior class assembly they told us, “This is the year that counts. If you do well up until Junior year, well…” The consequences were best left unsaid.

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It consumes me, this pressure. There is no respite from school. When I get ready for school I study, when I go home I study. At church, before anything else, I pray for good grades. School consumes my time, my hobbies, my time with family and friends.

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So even when I was on vacation—spending time with family I haven’t seen in a decade, seeing centuries worth of cultural history—I was thinking about school. Vacation was me gambling my future and I asked myself, was it worth it?

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I do believe education is important and that missing so much school is not advisable. But I also believe valuable learning cannot happen when it feels like doomsday everyday. Students are like Atlas, hunched over with the weight of the world on their shoulders. Yet, they still go to school, do the work of eight classes on top of extracurriculars.

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I want to see that the world extends beyond the school doors. That my life goes beyond high school. Maybe then I will be able to take a carefree vacation.