Introduction
High school is a difficult step in an individual’s life where they are transitioning from being a teenager to an adult. Going to a hyper-competitive high school just escalated this growth as well as increased the stress and anxiety that was felt by the students who attended Mission San Jose High School. An underlying pressure was to take more difficult classes to enhance their high school experience.
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AP classes to social pressures, students really went through a lot before the time they graduated. With this came a lot of growth as well as a sense of community. It wasn’t the individual but the school as a whole. Everyone knew the pressures faced around them and dealt with in community spirit and in supportive ways.
Generally, the kids who attended the local middle school got put into high school as well. This really limited growth when it came to meeting new people in high school. Often times the stereotypes made from middle school stuck for a long time, and so did friend circles. This affected the way this school functioned. "Popularity" stemmed from the intelligence of individuals and often times mental health was sacrificed. Even though my school emphasized the importance of mental health, it wasn't enough. Most students still experienced issues like stress and anxiety. I decided to use the summer of my junior year to study the effects of stress and anxiety and ways to reduce it from a cognitive science perspective. This was the website I made in relation to dealing with the stress and anxiety: https://mediationlifestyle.wixsite.com/stressanxiety?fbclid=IwAR2sbcqx_LXS86KzFl-cAy99Gn7_goHorzBtQ3Qpmj3QmZj3XuGqOLQo0d0. In addition to this, I’ve written a website I made in relation to dealing with the stress and a 10-page research report on the effects of stress and anxiety in high pressurized environments that I would like to take reference from.
In this oral history project, I wanted to delve deeper and further into the topic of stress and anxiety in particularly experienced in AP classes. In order to enhance my project and take it a step further, I decided to choose three individuals to interview who have directly felt the impacts of stress and anxiety as or observing AP students: AP teachers, current students taking AP classes, and alumni from Mission who took AP classes. I hoped to learn their perspective in dealing with this far-reaching issue especially as people who lived or are currently living through it. Their accounts may give this project the personal touch which often follows first-hand experiences hopefully increasing the understanding that comes from students who live through AP culture. The color scheme of this website is dark to represent the feeling of loss of hope when faced with a situation where stress and anxiety are involved. This project is something that was extremely personal and interviewing those who had faced similar problems like me in the past really benefitted me as an individual. Through their experiences, I was able to relate and learn how a problem so niche could be seen with so many different viewpoints. This website was built to help enhance the effectiveness of presenting the information collected from the interviews and enhance understanding of this topic.