Ridiculous Amounts of Anxiety

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First, details if they're important: I'm a sophomore in public high school in the United States.
OK, now prepare for a rant.


School is stressful. This is a generally accepted fact. However, I have yet to find somebody who gets stressed as quickly and easily as I do. It's due to a combination of things, including but not limited to: pointless assignments, pointless lessons, disorganized teachers, incompetent teachers, apathetic teachers, a ridiculous amount of homework accumulated throughout the day, and an arbitrary grading system. This is, of course, all in my opinion, but it's how I feel.

The thing is, I'm not good at controlling my anxiety. Instead of organizing my time to do my homework, I have to get the homework done as soon as I get it, or I will not be able to concentrate. Instead of rolling my eyes and laughing at the 'stupid' teacher's incompetence, like everyone else does, I'll sit there worrying about not being able to finish the classwork on time. Instead of questioning why I need to know about the origin of anti-transcendentalism, I just smile and nod and memorize and say what they want to hear.

In essence, school has set me up for failure. All throughout school - literally since first grade - the teachers have been telling us, simply put, that every single thing we do in school has the potential to ruin our lives. A bad grade leads to a bad report card, which lead to intermediate classes, which leads to college rejections, and if you don't go to college then you will end up at a minimum wage job, a disgrace to humanity.

If we don't understand something, we are stupid. The tests tell us how much stupider we are than other countries. The GPA rankings tell us how much stupider we are than the others in our school. On every level we are constantly being judged, tested, and ranked by the schools.

And it's coming at us from all angles. The teachers tell us we have standards to meet. Parents tell us we need to get into college. Ill-informed adults tell us we're so much dumber than they were when they were in school. The government tells us we need to catch up to the other countries. And we can't fail our school, our family, our generation, our country.

This is, of course, despite the fact that so many people are coming out of college in debt and unable to get jobs. This is despite the fact that, no matter how hard we try, we start working and are berated for having no real world experience. This is despite the fact that companies complain about having no creative thinkers, just having mindless drones submissively following orders. Why do you think that is? What do you think we have been taught all our lives?

So this is my future. This is what I've been putting all my time and energy into. Everyone breaks eventually, under perceived stressed like that. And then they want to know what's wrong. Why am I depressed? Why do I have anxiety? No matter, we'll just give you some pills and send you on your way. You'll be fine, just as long as you try your best. And as long as your best is enough for us.


/rant
I think I might have lost it a bit there. Sorry about that. And wow, that was a lot longer than I expected. Kudos to anyone who managed to read that entire thing. Anyway, what are your guys' opinions on school?

let me tell you, i understand!
im senior in public high school.
i started school at a large school last year.
they wanted to enroll me in special ed., but ended up putting me in general ed. to start.
my first day was terrible.
when i got on the bus,they asked me my age and couldnt belive i was a senior.
the guidance counselor showed me around the school but it didnt help any.
i had to have help getting to every class.
i was on a block scedule so had 4 classes per day.
in music, a boy was making fun at me.
i wrote the teacher a note saying i was going to snap.
i was suspended for 4 days.
i can back and had a 1:1.
she was nice.
but it was still hard.
even tho she stayed in class with me and walked me to every class,it was very difficult to do the work.
after a month, they decided to send me to a special ed. school after me IEP meeting.
im much happier now.
anyway,maybe you would be to.
do you have an IEP?
if so, talk to the team about sending you to a special school like mine that can help you.

Wow, glad school's finally working out for you. It must suck going to a new school in your senior year.
I doubt my mom would let me get an IEP, but I haven't looked into that for years. I'll need to research that again.
Thanks!