I can tell you from experience, both private and public schools have one thing in common: competition. Look around your school. What do you see? I'll tell you what I see: the need to have the most expensive clothing, newest phone, most expensive car, et cetera. Think about it. Do you find yourself wanting to one-up your friends? Be honest. I know I have at some point in time.
In my school parking lot, for example, there are more BWM's and Mercedes than one could possibly imagine. When I look at my 2006 Honda CRV, and the butterflies in my stomach start flapping their wings furiously. Do people look at me differently because my car is dated?
What about my phone? I got the iPhone 4 last year for my birthday. Does that mean I'm outdated if I don't have the newest phone? What about text messaging? Earlier this year in my statics class my teacher asked our class how many texts each student received in the past twenty-four hours. My count was twelve. Twenty minutes later, people started to come up with the answers of 200 or more. I firmly believe that people were at competition with each other. Who could get the most texts? Having only twelve texts sent to me made me feel terrible. Was it bad that hardly anyone had texted me? Should I start panicking? What am I doing wrong?
How about the difference between grade levels in high school? Come on. There is a distinct difference from being a senior and a freshman. At assemblies, the senior class boo's every other grade. Being a senior, I refrain from making negative comments to people in other grade levels. High school is hard enough as it is. Freshman, sophomores and juniors don't need four hundred students to remind them.
Trying to impress everyone is hard. Part of the stress we have as teens is living up to everyone else's expectations. The only people we need to impress is ourselves. Be at competition with yourself, and not with you high school.