You sit at your desk and stare at the notebook in front of you while glaring at your laptop screen. With a sharpened pencil in hand, you spend hours and hours working until the corner of your computer reads 3:25 a.m. You’ve completed homework assignments, studied for three crucial exams, and rewritten the third draft of an executive board application for a club. Finally, you head to school, greet your teachers, and chat with friends with a relaxed, but faux smile on your face. 

Since Stevenson offers over 30 AP courses, over 140 extracurricular clubs, and renowned cut sports teams, it’s undeniable the naturally competitive culture Stevenson harbors. Yet, we always seem to blame “Stevenson,” an empty entity that we often say pushes students to achieve the most to become admitted into a prestigious college. 

But instead of constantly pointing the figure at “Stevenson,” it’s time to put a name to the issue: palatable exteriors. Put simply, a “palatable exterior” describes the smiles and energetic attitudes many high school students feel they need to put on to appear successful and achieve certain accomplishments, despite feeling overworked and tired internally. As a result, the choice of hiding struggles by keeping a smile on their faces manifests and has become a common trend for many students.

There are a couple of examples where I have seen this at Stevenson, primarily through academics. It’s not uncommon to take at least five to six APs by your junior year. In fact, I’ve seen friends tack on extra APs, claiming they were “easy 5.0s” to raise GPAs and make transcripts more flashy. But inevitably, with AP and Honors courses come piles of homework and difficult exams that require hours and hours of studying. Those hours can lead to mean all-nighters, increased stress, and compromising your social life for work time. 

So, that’s what ends up happening, students who get perfect scores, come home from school and skip meals to stare at their iPads all day, stuffing equations, formulas, and theorems into their heads. Then, time flies, and students find themselves in the morning without any sleep and only anxiety for the nearing test. But do they allow their tired interior to show? No. Because looking tired and overworked is perceived as a weakness. To many students, it means that they aren’t smart enough to handle a college-level course and thus considered “embarrassing.” As a result, they put on the mask, plastering on a large smile as they get “meets” on their test, acting like it wasn’t difficult. 

Stanford University has even coined a term for this exact situation, the “Stanford Duck Syndrome”, which represents the idea that “students are struggling to survive the pressures of a competitive environment while presenting the image of a relaxed student, like a calm duck gliding across a fountain.” However, while keeping a happy look on their face, the constant worry of failure continues to build inside them. 

As a result, that constant positive look doesn’t stop with just one student; it only creates a cycle that perpetuates the need to seem successful. When other students see that their peers supposedly find a tough course like AP Physics C to be a piece of cake, it pressures them to take the same class and find it easy – if not easier.  

Moreover, academics aren’t the only aspect where we see the disconnect between the interiors and exteriors of students. Take interacting with teachers for college recommendation letters: most juniors are thinking about which teachers they want to ask for college recommendation letters. For their teachers to view them as successful for a glowing recommendation, students plaster on not just a bright smile but a bubbly, talkative personality every single day in that classroom for the sake of coming off as put together. 

Consequently, that student-teacher relationship then becomes stifling and, well, fake. If a student is actually struggling, they can’t genuinely interact with their teachers because they’ll risk fracturing the perfect persona they’ve built for the means of getting into a top college. 

Alternatively, because of the stigma that it is socially “unacceptable” to underachieve, students can tend to resort to certain tactics to raise their grades at the end of the semester. Specifically, they might put on a more negative exterior to their teachers without fully opening up about how they feel. However, it’s not to get support but to instead show a little internal struggle to tactfully draw out sympathy so that their teacher might raise their grade. To the student, it’s worth it, because the alternative is absolute failure in the eyes of their peers. 

As a result, inevitably, when a student has a bad day or cracks under tough pressure, they are unable to reach out to a valuable adult to support them because they have a fear of looking unsuccessful. Especially in a school with tough classes and competitive spirits, students need to know that teachers or Student Support Teams are resources when they are struggling. However, the pressure of hiding your difficulties, burying them beneath yourself to make a good impression rather than a genuine persona pushes students away from help. 

That issue applies to student relationships as well. Although it’s hard to admit, students face competition even within friend groups. And like it or not, we often surround ourselves with people who have goals similar to our own. Especially in friend groups where bonds are formed off intelligence and commitment to education, not being able to achieve the typical high-success expectations of the group can lead to experiencing offensive and hurtful statements from more “successful” peers.

For example, usually, when a student doesn’t perform as well as they hope to, they turn to their friends for support and comfort. Instead, their high-achieving friends don’t see it as an opportunity to be empathetic but instead to put them down, responding with “How did you fail that? It was so easy!”And that only furthers the need to appear successful, even in relaxed situations, when interacting with similar successful, seemingly stress-free, peers. It’s an effort to fit in and not seem like the “weakest link” in the group.

And over time, building a palatable exterior doesn’t actually create success. Eventually, with no one to authentically confide in about disappointments and mistakes, students will inevitably burn out. That’s partially why a 3-way study from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the Center for Digital Thriving at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Common Sense Media find that about 27 percent of teens are actively struggling from burnout stemming from distress over their future game plans, academics, and appearances. 

It’s ironic: palatable exteriors only drive a cycle of helplessness. One could argue that that would be the definition of “unsuccessful.” To prevent not only burnout but the degradation of students’ relationships, students need to understand that yes, having an optimistic attitude no matter the challenges you face is necessary to achieve your goals, however, it is also okay to sometimes let go. Students need to build a strong community or find a support group to rely on and show their tiredness, disappointments, and concerns to. Be open, honest, and true to yourself.

Suppose your end goal is to burn out, tired from the constant pressure you place on yourself. Then, sure, you can keep on smiling. But if you want to find yourself in a community that properly supports and understands your struggles, I urge you to let your interior be your exterior. The more you keep your stress, anxiety, and struggles bottled up, the harder it can get to focus on what you actually want to accomplish. Being your true, authentic self is what ultimately helps you to grow, reduce stress, and, in fact, be more successful. 

For Stevenson adults, such as Student Support Teams and teachers, it’s crucial to recognize that just because a student looks happy doesn’t mean they always are. In the future, closer relationships and more frequent check-ins with students, no matter how they seem to be doing, are necessary to truly build an authentic community where both success and struggles are celebrated and proudly demonstrated.