The Overachievers Book Report

Summer Reading Pt.2
In her novel The Overachievers: The Secret Life of Driven Kids, Alexandra Robbins displays the negative effects that modern american education has had on current and former high school students. Robbins writes about the first hand experiences witnessed by a group of nine teenagers who are considered the “Overachievers.” Eight of these students are currently enrolled at Walt Whitman High School and one alumni who is currently enrolled at Harvard. Robbins did not randomly stumble upon this public high school, but instead chose the school because she graduated from there close to ten years prior. From trying to maintain prestigious grades to attempting to retain their sanity from the outrageous amounts of pressure that they are consistently under, Robbins showcases the daily struggles that each of these students faces throughout this book. This book is intended to persuade the audience that their performance in school or the college they end up attending does not dictate who you are, nor does it predict how happy or successful you will be later on in life.
Of the group of students whose education careers were recorded, most of their worst critics were themselves, but a couple of the students faced a completely different hateful critic, their own parents. In positive ways or negative ways, parents play a substantial role in their children's education. In this book Robbins interviewed a student whose nickname was AP Frank. Frank received his nickname due to the substantial amount of AP …show more content…
In the book, there were cases of anorexia and thinning hair which were both results of students facing extreme pressure and success to do well in school.
"Thousands of students try to kill themselves everyday; it's said that for every suicide death, there are between eight and twenty-five

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