Freshman year can be stressful — you have more responsibilities, a new social playground to navigate, and much more homework compared to middle school. However, I also find myself worrying a lot about an issue I shouldn’t have at such an early stage of my life: college. At PHS, academic excellence is normalized to the point where any deviation from it might as well mean failure. This increasingly competitive academic landscape calls for a new type of student — someone who can easily fill up their Common Application activities list and summarize each of them under 150 words. It often seems like everyone around me is one of these exemplary students, which in turn incentivizes me to accomplish as much as I can to appear successful. Unfortunately, many students share that mentality, which creates a highly superficial and performative academic culture at PHS.

In my own experience, this type of environment has compelled me to join courses and student organizations based on how good they would look on my college application. It appears that many others feel the same way: according to an anonymous survey of PHS students who take AP courses, 69.8 percent are taking accelerated or AP classes for the primary purpose of looking good on college applications. However, performative culture goes beyond just taking an advanced class — I often find myself viewing each class period as an opportunity to put on a show. What can I say to sound like a bright student? How little work can I do while still receiving good grades? This is the reason some students read SparkNotes instead of the assigned book, or use ChatGPT for their notes. Students may take these shortcuts and appear competent, but they don’t actually advance their learning from doing so. Your peers don’t know or care if you truly learned from the assignment — they only see the score you received and its associated brilliance.

Performative student culture goes beyond just taking advanced classes; it also applies to the extracurricular activities students engage in. At PHS, it’s quite common for students to start clubs as a way to demonstrate their skills. In a survey of PHS students, 49 percent of respondents agreed that their primary purpose in starting or joining a club was to look good on their college application. Having many student organizations is beneficial for the school community, but in many cases, students register them without actually intending to follow through and have productive meetings.

When the only objective of one’s academic career is to get into a good college, they lose the purpose of what school is ultimately for: education. College isn’t the end-all-be-all of life, and there are so many skills taught in school that can be beneficial in the future. Filling up our lives with empty promises of intelligence is a recipe for disaster once we escape our bubble of college applications.

Realistically, it is difficult to stay completely away from performative culture in PHS’s competitive atmosphere. However, it is possible to work towards your goals in a manner that still benefits your personal development. This starts by being intentional about your activities — yes, you can create a club or non-profit to benefit your college application, but think about how you can learn and evolve from the experience instead of starting it only for the sake of appearing successful. Focus on the impact of your work, such as helping the community or raising awareness about an issue. When it comes to classes, ask plenty of questions and take charge of your own learning; after all, you are the beneficiary of the knowledge you gain. So the next time you consider taking a difficult class or committing to an extracurricular, ask yourself: will this actually help you grow as a person, or is it just another way of trying to outperform everyone else?