The Overachievers This was a fascinating read, especially as a homeschooler getting ready to start college in the fall. The book really made me think about the constant resume padding that students do. The section on mental health issues that students are experiencing here and comparison to the issues of students in Asia was scary and depressing. I found each of the students to be intriguing. I'm also now interested in reading Pledged by Robbins. ( )

Overachievers: the Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins is about the problems our generation faces. Ms. Robbins is a journalist, but she took a year off from newspaper writing to follow several teenagers at a Maryland high school through their daily lives. Readers watch as high school juniors and seniors and a college freshman deal with taking the SATs many times in order to get a perfect score of 1600 ( before the SAT was changed), taking many AP and honors classes, taking SAT prep classes, college admissions, extracurricular activities, as well as the social and familial lives of today’s teens. These teens are trying to get into Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and Georgetown, which most of us wouldn’t dream of applying for.
This book also includes some statistics about how endangered our generation is due to our workaholic, overachiever mentality. For example, this mentality means more teens suffer from depression, drug abuse, dating abuse, and have more car accidents. The book also disproves the “old person” myth that our generation is lazy (something that annoys me). Overachievers is a must-read for our generation or for our parents. ( )

This is a flawed book but has two real strengths. The kids tell their own stories, and the stories are about the perils of success, not failure. I was drawn in quickly by these hooks, having been a high school nerd burnout myself, but sort of lost interest midway through. I would have preferred the author to cover each student from start to finish, rather than cutting and shuffling the deck. Or else, if skipping back and forth, to cover fewer students.

Still, I thought the stories compelling and left the book lying about for my 13 year old granddaughter to find while resting from her apparent video game career. My thinking was that 1) she would be forewarned of falling into the overachiever trap (although that's not really a major concern) 2) she would see that superstudents weren't merely gifted, but worked like hell for the grades and 3) she would not feel defeated if her grades in high school turn out "merely" "good" or "average."

I was surprised. Not only did she pick the book up, but that she actually kept at it for a week or two, carried it about, and read it to the finish. I was pretty confident she got something from it because ultimately the spine was broken and the cover mutilated - sure signs of her approval (her copy of the Golden Compass looks like the Dead Sea Scrolls). We haven't discussed it yet though. Sometimes the oblique approach is best in these matters. ( )

This was definately an interesting book, covering an important but overlooked cultural phenomenon. "Helicopter mothers" have taken over the last couple of generations of kids, protecting them from failure and pushing them harder to reach for status colleges like the Ivies. Protecting our kids from failure, however, fails to teach kids important coping skills to deal with stress, at the same time we increase demands on their time with inordinate pressure to succeed. While I really enjoyed the topic, I thought this book was WAY TOO LONG and the points were exhausted way before the end of the book. I enjoyed the stories of the students the book followed, though I had a hard time keeping some of them separated, as they tended to be described objectively but not with emotion. This book could have used some serious editing, but overall, was good. ( )

Interesting so far, but not totally absorbing.