The 95 percent on your most recent math test gleams up at you in red, bold ink. The smile you try to hide is peaking through, reminding you that all that studying did pay off. A 95 percent, “That’s good enough,” you assure yourself. Your table partner then shouts, his words piercing through your skin, “I got 100!” You look back down at the dull, red 95 on your test. “How could I have missed those five points?” Your assuring smile quickly turns into a flat line of, “I could have done better.”

With the high level of academic competition and pressure at PHS, students are constantly comparing their academic self-worth to one another, resulting in students who never feel fully satisfied with their grades.

I always hear of Piedmont’s values of fostering a supportive community for everyone, a community where students feel safe, supported and happy. I agree that resources such as the Wellness Center support students, but the mindset at  PHS causes these qualities to vanish.

Academic competition is morphing the true meaning of a supportive community. Instead of working together, students work against one another because they base their academic success off of the scores of their neighbor.

I have a friend who needs to ask what the person next to her got on a test every single time she receives back her own, just to  evaluate how worthwhile her 95 percent is. I have a friend who refuses to tell anyone what her scores are because she does not want her 95 percent morphing into something it is not due to others successes. I can assure you that the friend who does not take or share scores is happier.

When students fixate on doing better in school than their peers, it naturally results in a lack of support for other’s achievements.

Yes, in small doses, academic success can be beneficial. However, there is a line between a student pushing another to do better and a student fighting their way to be in front of another, blocking him/her out.

In Kristine Tucker’s article, “Positive and Negative Effects of Competition on Academic Achievement,” she address the pros and cons of academic competition.

When academic competition is managed the right way, it allows students to be more motivated and learn life skills such as dealing with “not taking home a trophy.” This is all true, yet when academic competition passes that thin line, it causes students to fixate only on what their scores mean  in comparison to those of their peers. Competition can be negative when it leads to unbalanced living or forces students to give up their other interests.

Many students at PHS have fallen into Tucker’s unhealthy competition category.  Despite the many benefits of academic competition, we, as students, have crossed that line, to the climate where academic competition is no longer beneficial. As hard as it is, if not impossible, to avoid academic competition and pressure, we can begin to shift our mindsets towards supporting one another and ourselves by not constantly comparing our scores to those of our classmates. The amount of  “I’m so pissed she got an 100 percent” lines I have heard at this school are countless. With this academic Darwinism attitude, we are dismantling the definition of a supportive community.

Your personal academic achievements should never be belittled by the scores of your peers. As much as our society shifts us into thinking this way, our self-worth does not equate to the letters on our transcripts or how many more points we have in a gradebook than our neighbors. Success comes from being content with your work, supporting your peers for their achievements, and most importantly, not letting those achievements take away from your own self worth. The first step in easing this academic competition and pressure here at PHS is to be confident with the letter written on your paper or the score put on Infinite Campus. That bright red 95 percent on your paper should never be morphed into something it is not just by looking at your friend’s 100.