Working, getting headaches, looking back and forth at the paper for knowledge after knowledge, pressing hard at the paper with a pencil and turning in the work to the teacher all for just one thing. For what? Grades.

In a 2005 article, the pressure for good grades leads to high stress.  In the article, Denise Clark Pope said that stress is created from the pressure of getting top grades from parents and schools.  Researching the sources on high-achieving students’ intellectual engagement, Pope found something else.  “Students feel as if their life success depends on getting the top SAT scores and the highest grades,” said lecturer in the School of Education Denise Clark Pope.  Pope said students feel like the most important thing they could do is get the grade by any possible means.

“I feel scared sometimes because you may never know if it’s good or not” said freshman Edrina Apilis.  “Like I want to be a doctor or nurse so I want to work hard in school so I can achieve my goals” said Apilis.

Not only grades seems to stress out the students but the ones who give them the grades. Grade inflation does often put more pressure on professors to give higher grades for better evaluation.

“I think it depends on the assignments that I give,” said social studies teacher Robi Nitake.  “I think all assignments are different but it can get pretty hard depending on what the assignment is I guess” said Nitake.  Nitake said how hard the assignments are is how much work hours she uses to grade her students.

A thing that a student might would think is that the work is too difficult.  However, well when a student studies more and eventually gets smarter, grades are like rulers.  Grades measure how hard you work and how much you achieve.  When the work is easy, students get good grades.  Students get good grades and teachers and administrators are satisfied.  Satisfaction leads to more expectations.  GPA’s go higher, and teachers expects students to do better more well as the last students who did well.  See the cycle yet?

“I think one of the things is that you gotta have one goal,” said Principal Ron Okamura. “When you understand where you want to be and how to get there, it makes it a lot easier.”