Introduction

The Lyrical Essay was the English 4 first semester final. The essay was mean to be writing that can inspire to some very compelling media productions. The goal of this essay was to write about something that you are passionate about, but also use lyrical techniques to make your message come across in unique ways. I chose to write my essay about the amount of stress that students go through in their teenage years. I chose this topic because it was very relevant to my situation at the time, I had just finished applying to all of my colleges and I was extremely stressed waiting for my decisions. My classmates were all also going through a similar process so I thought it would be relatable.

Process

My process for writing the lyrical essay was pretty chaotic. I just wrote down all of the things about the schooling system and teenage life in general that I was passionately angry about, then I did a lot of research to see the possible effects of the stress these things were causing. I ended up learning a lot about stress and the detrimental effects it can have on your mental and physical health.

Lyrical Essay

Teenagers are getting stressed and are having an increase in mental issues. Research conducted by the therapist Sara Villanueva says that,”Adolescence has always been an awkward stage where teens struggle to build their own identity, seek autonomy, and learn about intimacy and sexuality in relationships. These things all cause a certain level of angst, but they are not really new. What is new is the environment that we live in, and it is this fast-paced, perpetually plugged-in society that sets the tone for the messages and expectations that teens receive every day. Due to varying pressures around school, work, and families.” The article goes on to describe how this sharp uptake in stress among teens correlates with the increased expectations in our academics, especially from colleges.

The top universities only take students with ridiculously high grade points averages, coming from Los Altos high school the average can be as high as 

4.4

 to get into a college like Stanford. This pressure to get better than perfect grades at such an early age puts too much stress on high school students. 

If you want to get into a top university you have to prepare to spend every waking hour on getting amazing grades, but more than that you have to fill out the rest of your resume. Colleges don’t just want to see perfect grades they also want to see that 

You were the captain of a high school sports team, 

You have multiple extra curricular activities,

that you have work experience, 

and you volunteer frequently. 

All of this adds up to create an incredibly stressful high school experience that causes many students to get depressed and possibly even suicidal. Something we have to evaluate as a society is, is all of this worth it? Should we be causing this amount of psychological damage to society’s youth just so that we are sure to be well rounded geniuses before we are even 18? 

Studies conducted by the cleveland medical clinic have shown how stress doesn’t only affect our emotions, but can also have physical complications. Stress can cause physical symptoms such as headaches, an upset stomach, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, and problems sleeping. Acne can also get worse due to an increase in stress. 

Stress is a growing problem in teenagers’ lives, and we should be doing everything we can to fix the system causing these problems.

Intention Statement

Most of the comments I got didn’t suggest to fix/change much, but I did get a suggestion to add more poetic devices. I had basically nothing in terms of poetic devices in my original draft, but for this draft I added in some spacing devices. I originally thought of adding in a narrative, maybe about my own experiences with stress. However, I don’t think it would have worked too well for this type of essay. 

My choice of subject is pretty simple, I have been getting a little stressed over the past few months of distance learning. A combination of school, college apps, and all of the crazy things going on in 2020 have made life stressful. I think the only thing that I have really enjoyed doing in the past two months is playing fantasy football, watching all of the games, and playing football with my friends at the elementary school. It might be kinda sad that the only things I enjoy doing right now are football related, but it helps keep me preoccupied and not stressed. I just hope that everybody has an outlet that is similarly helping them as well. 

My essay is akin to an argumentative essay because I really believe that societie, and college’s are putting too much pressure on teens even in the best of circumstances. And 2020 has definitely not been the best of circumstances. The damage that this year alone is going to cause to society’s future could be devastating, and I think it is easily avoidable. So I thought that stress was an appropriate subject for this year.

I was heavily influenced by the research I did because I learned a lot about stress and the effects it has on teenagers. The research done by Sara Villanueva was particularly helpful in teaching me about stress.

Lyrical Essay Production

After I finished writing the lyrical essay the next part of the project was to create some powerful media to represent the essay.

I chose to make the media to represent my lyrical essay in illustrator because it is my favorite tool. The design in this project is meant to portray a student struggling in his studies, stressed about college, and who needs help. The text at the top and bottom of the bookshelf are the most common side effects of high stress in teenagers, and I am trying to convey the damage that the stress caused by school is doing to students.

Reflection

I had a really fun time writing this essay and making this project, especially because it is so relevant to my life. The illustrator wasn’t extremely challenging for me because I have been using illustrator for a while, but it was still fun and took a lot of time to design the project. The hat was particularly challenging to get the angle of the curves right, and there are a lot of small details that took a while.