Stuy Afloat on the Sea of Numbers

A social life, good grades, and enough sleep—choose wisely, because you can only pick two. The ideal Stuyvesant student has perfect grades, great extracurriculars, and great potential—that includes the great potential of developing mental health issues. Outside of the classroom, it’s more common to hear “I’m going to kill myself” or “Please push me off of a building” followed by laughter, rather than “I’m gonna take a break.”

Our parents, our teachers, and even our peers talk about how we’re supposed to be the best and the brightest, how we’re supposed to be leading the nation to great things someday. We knew the rigorous academic setting we were getting into. But why does that mean we “don’t get to complain”?

To my parents, my Stuyvesant experience is nothing more than a number. When I (Marie) get home, I’m not met with, “Did you learn anything interesting today?” Instead, my parents ask me whether I got any grades back or what tests I have coming up.

They expect me to get good grades, and if I don’t meet their expectations, I am lectured about how I’m not going to get into a “good” college. Even after countless mental breakdowns about grades, there’s no room to complain because as a Stuy student, I’m expected to deal with it. After all, Stuyvesant is a place where the ends justify the means: as long as you get into a good college, your experience here doesn’t matter.

With 3,350 students in a 10-floor building, the competition is immense and the pressure to succeed can make or break you. It’s the prime example of a “sink-or-swim” environment, and most students seem to float around during their four years.

Unfortunately, a large number of students “sink,” especially with this year’s increase in mental health-related hospitalizations. What if the notion of the “perfect Stuy kid” just doesn’t exist and we are all just sinking ships? Do some of us just take longer to drown?

I (Alex) cannot, using both hands, count the amount of times that I’ve drowned. During freshman year, suicidal ideations intruded my daily thoughts. During sophomore year, anxiety attacks were so common that at my low points, they felt more like sinking than shaking.

Instead of being proud of one’s well-being, many Stuy students take pride in the exact things that cause many mental health problems: numbers. The numbers mean everything, from the amount of likes on a profile picture to the grades that colleges see. And we, as students who grew up thinking that numbers were worth more than us, use that exact system to rank ourselves too. Before we even got into this school, we were already a statistic. On the SHSAT, a test with a simple cut-off score, you either get in or you don’t.

At Stuy, college admissions dominate everything. Some students create clubs for the sole purpose of making themselves look good, and others go to clubs that seem “scholarly.” The option of doing something because it makes you happy rather than because it makes you look good for college is uncommon.

The students who do create or go to clubs that aren’t geared toward adding that extra touch on their college application are commonly questioned about their intentions. Why’d you make it? What college are you trying to impress? It’s almost like finding rare birds, but they’re only rare because they’ve been driven to near extinction.

We have been questioned about the creation of Stuy Limitless, a club we made for both the purpose of helping people with their self-confidence and for helping ourselves along the road of recovery from mental illnesses. The joke “Did you make this for college?” isn’t funny when you realize that other students genuinely believe this. That shakes us to the core—to realize that an environment that cultivates learning is the same one that cannot see past numbers.

But, no one is born with a superiority complex. No one pops out of the womb screaming, “I’m better than you for having one more point on my exam!” People claim that this is just the “Stuy attitude,” but, by doing that, they’re only dismissing the problem instead of facing it. How many Stuy students have to drown before we actually address this issue?

Luckily, as junior year comes to a close, I (Alex) have recovered. I’ve used my resources when I’ve hit my low points this year; I’ve gone to guidance and to the nurse. Resources are available to us, such as the SPARK program’s free, confidential counseling.

The administration has started to change their mentality, with guidance department meetings starting to focus more on mental health and the effects of stress, and presentations focusing on teaching freshmen how to cope effectively with it. But, there’s only so much they can do to solve the problem if the main issue is ourselves.

Most of us expect our peers, teachers, and parents to be able to see that we are drowning. We expect them to throw a life jacket to save us, but everyone is in their own bubble. Rather than waiting for other people to notice that we are struggling, we need to take action for ourselves and actively seek help.

We need to stop being stone walls, with our mental health resources bouncing off of us like rubber balls. As students, we need to start reaching out more instead of waiting for others to come to us. One cannot fix a problem without first recognizing it—so we, the student body, now need to change before our own foundation falls out from under us.