“We’re complicit in it, every single student here,” said sophomore Avery Redhmond. “We created it. I don’t think it's the classes here that really add to people's stress; it's the culture here. It's the expectation that you succeed in everything you’ve ever tried.”

It is no surprise that, when looking at an Instagram survey conducted among the student body of Maggie Walker, 89% often feel stressed about school and their academic workload. The admissions process at the governor’s school ensures that only the brightest, most motivated students get in, but at an elite academic institution, suddenly being smart does not feel like it is enough. Many students may feel stressed from school, but whether that stress is the fault of the workload itself or the fault of the student can often seem unclear.

 Mr. John Wilkes, a long-time history teacher at Maggie Walker, notes that students frequently put the stress on themselves, stating, “When you go to an elite academic institution, you are accepting that there is going to be stress in your life. We don’t require students to take challenging advanced classes beyond our core curriculum. We go to great lengths to advise students when we think they shouldn’t take advanced classes… though students won’t always admit it, many, though certainly not all, of these pressures are brought on by a student or family’s own decisions –not a teacher’s or the school’s.” 

It is true that students have a fair bit of control over their classes; however, internal influences at Maggie Walker often affect students’ views of what is “rigorous.'' On the topic of rigor in their course schedule, junior Gray Pershing states, “I would say my course load isn’t rigorous compared to other Maggie Walker students because I’m only taking three APs compared to other people, who are taking four or five.” 

While there are a significant number of MLWGS students taking four or more Advanced Placement classes in their junior or senior year, according to the College Board, in 2018, only 21% of students nationwide took three or more AP tests. Being put in an elite academic institution like Maggie Walker has seemingly tainted students' views as to what is considered “rigorous.” Taking just three AP classes already puts one ahead of more than 70% of high school students, but here, it often does not seem like enough. 

Other times, students feel influenced to take classes that are more challenging because, as Nina McGinnis (‘24) puts it, “It’s just what you do.” Classes like AP United States History (APUSH) are widely taken, not necessarily because all of those students are interested in history, but because they feel like taking that class is the school norm. 

“People look at you weirdly if you don’t take APUSH, because they’re like ‘Why? Everyone takes APUSH—you’re supposed to take APUSH.’ And I'm not going to lie, I do the same thing. I don’t understand. There’s an expectation here of what classes you should take, and if you’re not fitting that expectation, you’re going to get some weird looks,” McGinnis said. Similarly, Redmond added, “I’m going to take AP Government next year, not necessarily because regular government is worse, but because you’re supposed to take AP Government.” 

Furthermore, Yeeva Chunnanond (‘24) remarked that it is not the school which tells students to take more classes, but rather peers. She remarked, “The only people that pressure you to take more classes are the students around you that you’re ‘competing’ with.”

However, other students still feel that their teachers are causing them stress, more so than the classes themselves. Plenty of students long for better communication with their teachers. Pershing articulated, “The students at Maggie Walker would be a lot less stressed if the teachers communicated a lot more and tried to balance student testing and project workload,” a shared opinion among much of the student body. 

Wilkes also agrees that communication is important; however, he notes that it is the responsibility of the student to make it clear when they feel stressed, “Sometimes certain things that cause stress aren’t apparent to teachers. Teachers don’t always know what students have going on, and when that is hidden from a teacher, we walk this challenging line where we may want to help a student who is going through a stressful time, but we might not know that that is happening.”

Redmond expressed that she feels that most teachers do not try to fit their class around their students, asserting, “If you know that every single teacher at the school is giving a test the same week, but you’ve decided to give a test that week simply because you’ve been doing it for 30 years despite all your students being extremely stressed, that is adding to my stress.” Instead, Redmond mentioned the importance of having teachers who try to vary their classes and mold their teaching methods around the needs of their students.

Mr. Sam Ulmschneider, a history teacher and former student at Maggie Walker, has had his teaching style pointed out multiple times for being one that minimizes student stress. When asked about how his former time as a student may have impacted his teaching style, he stated, “I’m pretty far away from my student experience. I graduated in 2002. But, at the same time, certain things are still very similar. The one-upsmanship of achievement still feels the same. The tendency of Maggie Walker students to commit to a large amount of extracurriculars is still the same. I did it as a student, and I remember the amount of stress it put me under.”

However, as much as Ulmschnieder indicates that he puts effort into ensuring as little student stress as possible, he still makes the point that teachers cannot always prioritize their students’ mental health. He explains, “We’re taught that we should always be considering the overall student experience, that we have some responsibility to mitigate stress. All teachers need to learn how to temper their own activities in class in response to student stress. That doesn’t mean universal jubilees on late work, or a walking back on our expected standards, because a teacher's primary responsibility is giving students a strong understanding of the content area and their goals, and to cultivate students’ skills. Mitigating student stress is tertiary to those two primary goals.”

While it has been addressed that classes and teachers can have an impact on student’s stress, it may not be the primary cause. Chunnanond makes it clear that her stress is derived from elsewhere. She explained, “Pressure at Maggie Walker, a lot of the time, is just you comparing yourself to other students. What happens at this school is you sit alone by yourself in your bed, and you think, ‘I think I can be doing so much better right now,’ and all this self doubt comes crashing down on you. It’s not intentional culture, it's something that we point out.”

It is no wonder that when we are all competing to get into the same elite universities, we start seeing each other—our friends and peers—as competition. In the aforementioned survey conducted, 86% of Maggie Walker students (206 out of 240) indicated that they feel pressured by the culture at MLWGS to overachieve or overcompensate academically. This may be the fault of the larger student body mindset. 

Whether or not you aim to achieve top marks or go to an elite university does not matter when you are placed among students who do. While students with a 3.8 GPA might find themselves among the top of their class at other schools, here, students will inevitably feel behind the pack. McGinnis explains this feeling, stating, “Not everyone here is an overachiever, but a lot of us are, so you end up comparing yourself to others.” This constant comparison and sense of competition is the root of student stress, and appears to be something unique to Maggie Walker and other elite schools compared to less academically-driven schools in the area. 

According to the Instagram survey, 82% of students feel that they are not pushing themselves as much as they should compared to other students academically. This absurdly high percentage of students displays a problem that cannot solely be fixed by actions on behalf of the school or its faculty. When a large number of students who are already academically gifted feel that they are not gifted or working hard enough, they are easy targets for self-induced stress. Redmond acknowledges, “There’s always someone behind you that’s smarter than you.” She feels that this student culture has affected her way of thinking, stating, “I used to be a person who was like, ‘Oh, what you’d get?’ everytime we get a test score back, but I don’t do it anymore. I may not ask what your test score was, but I’m surely thinking about it. If I got a bad grade, my first thought was, ‘What is the class average?’”

Numerous students also stated that they would feel less stressed if they went to another school; however, many also remarked that they would invest the same, if not greater, amount of effort into their academics, indicating there is something beyond the workload, like internalized pressure, that is bringing them stress. 

As Wilkes states, “One of the great revelations that we have is that because we’re so insular in our own little worlds, there is this thought that Maggie Walker kids are the only kids that work hard. We see this very inaccurately.” This argument becomes apparent when thinking about other specialty centers in nearby counties, including Clover Hill’s Math and Science Center. However, while Clover Hill students experience large workloads that are similar, if not greater, than Maggie Walker students, it would be false to assume that they feel just as stressed. 

Jude Molique, a sophomore at Clover Hill’s Math and Science Center, stated, “There’s not much of an expectation here. There’s mostly pressure from other students to push yourself, but I feel like we can handle it.” Whether or not Molique believes that there is an expectation at Clover Hill, he still remarks that there is pressure from other students. He does not see this as a big issue, though. 

The key difference discovered between pressures and expectations at other schools and pressure at Maggie Walker is that many students feel guilty if they are not achieving the same things as others. Pershing affirms, “I felt really guilty if I wasn’t going home every night and doing six hours of homework and getting four hours of sleep. It’s a predominantly hustle culture mindset here.”

Even after this revelation, another question remains: how much should Maggie Walker as a school be doing to mitigate stress? While many students stated that they want to see more resources, it is important to understand that avoiding stress is not the goal. Wilkes expressed, “I personally believe that we have provided a tremendous amount of support. I think we have some kids that just have better management skills, and whether that comes from family or from friend groups or from the way they’re brought up, they deal with it. I think that stress is a real problem, but I think that we need to help students learn how to manage stress, rather than believe that we can try to remove stress.” 

Other students mirror Wilkes’ views on desiring more ways to manage stress rather than avoid it. Junior Mark Janssen states, “Maggie Walker needs ways to help with managing stress. Just trying to avoid it doesn't work. Everyone gets stressed at some point. Just pretending it doesn’t exist and then getting stressed and not knowing how to manage it is bad.” 

Despite a clear common consensus that Maggie Walker needs more resources revolving around stress, no specific recommendations were given on what those resources ought to be. Many students were also not aware of or have yet to consider the measures already taken by the school to avoid or manage stress. These changes include the mindfulness room, a lack of midterms, the homework policy, and the additional rule that ensures that homework will not be given over breaks. 

Ulmschneider has noticed this lack of ideas for resources, voicing, “It’s very easy to commit oneself to a position that ‘Yes, you should more,’ and then the rubber hits the road you say, ‘Well what will you do, and what can you do?’ The school has a number of institutional, legal, and curricular constraints that put a pretty significant straitjacket on what it can do to mitigate student stress.”

It is clear that there is still much that needs to be done to fully mitigate the amount of stress students are facing, but with it being derived from student culture and guilt, there is not much that can be done aside from the students’ inward reflection on self-induced stress as a result of comparison. This is the reality of our decision to go to a school as prestigious as Maggie Walker. Janssen, however, reminds us of a silver lining we must continue to embrace in order to survive in the high-stress environment Maggie Walker students have created for themselves: “Remember that you’re here for a reason. You’re smart, too.”