Listening to guest speaker Andy Dunn talk about friendships and mental health during the wellness assembly Feb. 27 made me think of the great friendships that I now have after my four years of high school. I have people who I deeply trust and call my best friends. Looking back at my earlier years of high school, I can see how I struggled. I struggled to find a balance between my schoolwork and a social life. For two years, I chose school and I struggled emotionally because of my choice.
Lab and U-High students must work to promote having good friendships as much as they push students to get good grades — because social well-being is as important as academic success.
In October, Director of Schools Tori Jueds shared Lab’s results from the spring 2024 Independent Schools Association of the Central States survey. About 83% agreed or strongly agreed that “Lab fosters students’ academic achievement.” But only 56% of parents and just 33% of students felt that Lab does an excellent or very good job helping students develop life skills.
Lab students lack well-developed life skills, mainly because most of us have always gone to the same school with the same people. Stuck in the “Lab bubble,” we haven’t had to work hard to maintain friendships when we’ve been around the same people for up to 15 years.
We need to make more schoolwide social events during school. One of the easiest ways for students to spend time with each other is through the few school-run social events like ArtsFest, grade-wide movie nights and lock-ins, and school dances outside of classes and clubs during lunch. These allow students to spend social time with friends without having to sacrifice doing school work or extracurriculars.
I know that getting good grades, in all of our minds, has a clear benefit: getting into the best college. And I can also admit that on the surface, having good friends and maintaining friendships doesn’t appear to have direct benefits, but good friendships help you more than you would know. According to the Mayo Clinic, having strong friendships helps support your mental health, eases anxiety and allows you to have a strong coping mechanism.
In life, what matters most is not the A you got on a test or the time you’ve spent studying, it’s about the connections you make. I know I won’t look back at my high school years thinking about the AP Calc BC test that I did well on or the English 2 “Great Gatsby” paper I wrote, but I’ll think about the late nights at senior retreat talking with my friends or the homecoming soccer games we went to every year. As they say, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
