1.

With today's generation, students have a lot more responsibilities and are forced to grow up faster
than the previous generations. These students not only hold the responsibilities for their educations but
also their jobs and other matters in life. Many students feel the stress of managing their regular classes,
homework, exams, studying, part-time jobs, and finding time to socialize with friends. In addition, high
school students have the pressure of passing all the standardized tests, like the SAT, ACT, and Exit
Exams, to be able to graduate. These students are under great pressure by their families, school, friends,
and jobs. One of the heaviest pressures on students is the pressure to get good grades. Generally, it is
caused by the parents who want them to have good grades, so they can get scholarships, get into a good
college, and get a good job. If the students don't reach their parents' expectations, they would probably
get punished or grounded. In addition, colleges look for well-rounded and high grade-point-average
applicants, hence, the students feel the pressure to participate in sports, community services, and
school leaderships besides school works. The students experience the high level of anxiety and
tremendous pressure of trying to achieve satisfactory grades to impress theirs friends, relatives, and
family. The students have been taught the impression that getting good grades will have a good career
and good life-style. Consequently, they get very worried about their grades, because they believe the
world is judging them based on their grades. The pressure to get good grades has becoming a threat to
many students and causing many students start cheating, and taking drugs, and drinking alcohol.

Because there is a lot of pressure to get good grades, students are willing to do anything to get that
grade, even cheating. In high school, students have a great deal of pressure from their parents to take as
many h

2. Unfortunately, many kids collapse under too much parental pressure. Sleep deprivation, eating
disorders, excessive worrying, cheating, burnout, loss of interest in hobbies or withdrawing from friends
and family can all be consequences of excess pressure. Stress and anxiety can manifest physically, too.
"Anxiety can present differently in children than in adults. While adults are typically able to identify and
express when they feel anxious, children may just complain of physical symptoms or not say anything at
all," Jason Schiffman, M.D., resident physician at the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral
Sciences at UCLA, explains. Kids feeling overwhelmed about school performance may have
stomachaches, diarrhea, headaches and rashes. Younger children may experience nightmares or refuse
to go to school.

3. Instead, panelists linked cheating to the social pressure put on students to prize high grades over
education and other values, including creativity and imagination.

Pressure by parents and schools to achieve top scores has created stress levels among students
beginning as early as elementary schoolthat are so high that some educators regard it as a health
epidemic, said Denise Clark Pope, a lecturer in the School of Education and the author of Doing School:
How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students. "The
number one cause of visits to Vaden Health Center used to be relationships, but now is stress and
anxiety," she said.
When Pope shadowed five students at an area high school for a year in order to research the sources of
high-achieving students' intellectual engagement, she found instead that students spent most of their
time "finagling the system" in pursuit of grades. "In every class where a test was administered, there
was cheating," Pope said. Students feel as if their life success depends on getting the top SAT scores and
the highest grades, she added. The students "know [cheating] is wrong; they tell me they wish they
didn't do it," she said. "But they feel like the most important thing they do is get the grades, by hook or
by crook."

Although some students have told Roberts that cheating was part of the culture in their high schools,
the motive for cheating is high in the intensely competitive computer science field, he said. Students are
drawn to the discipline because of the potential for high income, and unlike in other more subjective
fields, "the computer is completely unforgiving as an arbiter of correctness."

4. Pupils may withdraw from social and sports activities which are actually vital in managing stress
levels. In the worst cases, there have been rare incidents of young people committing suicide when
under extreme stress with exams.

5.