B

I can tell you from experience, both private and public schools have one thing in common. Look around your school. What do you see? Beautiful buildings? Good teachers? I’ll tell you what I see: the need to have the most expensive clothing, newest phone, most expensive car, etc. Think about it. Do you find yourself wanting to one-up (胜过) 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, the butterflies in my stomach start flapping their wings wildly. Do people look at me differently because my car is old?

What about my phone? What about text messaging? Earlier this year in my statistics class my teacher asked our class how many texts each student received in the past 24 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 in 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? My teacher would never have thought that his question which intended a better understanding of the course made me uncomfortable.

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 gatherings, the senior class boos(喝倒彩) every other grade, sometimes causing fights. Being a senior, I don’t want to make negative comments on 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. Most of the stress we have as teens is living up to everyone else’s expectations. The only people we need to impress are ourselves. Be in competition with yourself and you’ll live a happier life.