What Disney Channel Teaches Us About College
when i was in sixth grade
i wrote down all of my goals on post-it
notes and stuck them to my bedside table
so i could remind myself as i was going
to bed and waking up every morning
of what i was pushing myself to achieve
and the type of person i wanted to be
i wrote try out for the school musical
make friends with a person in each of
the friend groups at school
and get into stanford to play both
softball and soccer
slightly more aggressive than the other
goals
now as a junior in high school and
someone that’s put a lot of thought into
the college admissions process
i began to wonder where this idea came
from in the first place
it wasn’t for my parents i knew they’d
be proud of me no matter where i ended
up
as long as i would i was working hard
and it certainly wasn’t my sixth grade
teachers telling me that if i didn’t
memorize the state capitals
i would never get into stanford and
become successful
and i was no outlier recently i was
speaking with one of my friends
and she was reading me the letter she
wrote in fifth grade to her future self
she had written never give up on your
dream of going to stanford or harvard
she wrote that in fifth grade so where
were we
as kids that had years before we had to
start thinking about college
getting the idea that we had to go to
schools that accept less than five
percent of their applicants
where were we even hearing about these
schools in the first place
let’s start with her for those of you
that have never seen the disney channel
original movie high school musical
this is gabriella montez a model student
and member of the academic decathlon
team who loves to sing
and committed to stanford university
teddy duncan from the show good luck
charlie committed to yale
hannah montana aka miley stewart and her
best friend lily committed to
stanford bayley from suitelife on deck
to yale and ally from austin denali was
rejected from harvard surprising
but after scoring a do-over interview
she was accepted
how many people do you know that got to
have a do-over interview
now i’m not going to say that all of
these acceptances were completely
outrageous
but think about the seed that’s being
planted in young kids minds
the smart characters go to stanford
harvard and yale
not even the other ivy league schools
when cody from suite life on deck was
rejected from yale and being comforted
by his mother
she said there’s always princeton and he
responded
and i quote the armpit of the ivy league
and when she suggested brown he called
it a glorified junior college in an
ugly color and it’s a similar story
for shows like gilmore girls rory
gilmore was accepted to harvard yale and
princeton
after her only main achievements being
her gpa her position on the school
newspaper
and the fact that she was vice president
of her class
same goes for shows like glee gossip
girl and the
netflix original shows and movies that
reach the newer wave of impressionable
kids and teens
given that so many of the smart
characters go on to these elite and uber
competitive colleges
it’s no surprise that so many young kids
would aspire to do the same
generally these characters are the
logical responsible ones
the voices of reason for many of the
shows they’re on so many watchers
including 6th grade me looked up to them
as role models
but adopting this mentality at such a
young age can be very dangerous
there are almost 27 000 high schools in
the us
meaning there are almost 27 000
valedictorians
however the pat in the past year harvard
accepted
under 2 000 applicants into the class of
in 2016 stanford only accepted eight
percent of their applicants that scored
an 800 or
perfect score on the math section of the
sat
it’s not enough to have perfect grades
or perfect test scores
students that seem like their shoe-ins
to everyone that knows them are getting
rejected at unbearably high rates
it’s easy to fall into the mindset of
thinking if i just had blank
then i’d be happy however or for many
people
this this would be a boatload of cash
the perfect body or an acceptance letter
from
from blank university putting all of
your self-worth on a singular item or
achievement
is toxic and leaves you feeling empty
and disappointed if you can’t have it
in a time when many people are tailoring
the way they spend their time to appeal
to the college admissions boards at
certain colleges it can also feel like
the entirety of how you spent your high
school years was a complete waste
this attitude is dangerous even for the
tiny percentage of applicants that are
accepted into these top schools
and are watching their lifelong dreams
come to fruition
the if i just had blank then i’d be
happy attitude is simply untrue
because of a process called hedonic
adaptation
hedonic adaptation as was explained to
me from the yale online
coursera course the science of
well-being is the process of becoming
accustomed to both positive
and negative things so their emotional
effects dissipate over time
this feature of the mind can be very
helpful in scenarios like a painful
breakup
or the loss of a family member because
although you originally think
my life is over and there’s no way i’m
going to recover from this pain
your brain eventually adapts to it and
you’re able to carry on
however in the scenario of being
accepted into college
students do not feel the same initial
exuberance and joy that they felt upon
opening their acceptance letter
when they’re waking up their junior year
to head to their midterms
eventually the college you go to simply
becomes the college you go to
and this doesn’t have to be a bad thing
as long as you still love your school
and the environment it fosters
however if you committed simply based
off of how proud you were to say the
name and wear the sweatshirt
this can be very problematic the
mentality of striving
for awesome things or impressive
accomplishments and basing your
happiness around that
is not only toxic in the context of
college admissions
but also in every aspect of your life in
a study done in 2003 by nickerson and
colleagues
they surveyed college freshmen on their
materialist materialist attitudes
for example how much do you want this
really awesome car
or how much do you want this really cool
stuff
20 years later they found that those
that had materialist attitudes
reported having much lower life
satisfaction and
more diagnosed mental health disorders
no matter how financially
successful they were or weren’t when the
effects of getting something new and
exciting wear off
you’re left with a void that many people
attempt to fail by acquiring
more and more cool and exciting stuff
however none of this
is going to lead to long-term happiness
because of hedonic adaptation
so what lifestyle does lead to more
fulfillment and happiness
reverse the mindset of waiting for
happiness to come as a result of certain
possessions and achievements
and think about the things that you do
that genuinely bring you happiness
or the core values and principles that
leave you feeling fulfilled
and base your life in the way you spend
your time around that
circling back to college admissions this
would mean that rather than molding who
you are and the way you spend your time
to appeal to certain college admissions
boards spending the time pursuing
passions that feel meaningful to you
and choosing your college and looking
for colleges based on
which schools align best with your
interests and your priorities
this idea is not groundbreaking or new
in any way and i guarantee you that
anyone that has just gone through the
college app process or is about to go
through it
has heard it many times before at our
school they often say that choosing a
college is not about winning a game
it’s about making a match and this idea
should theoretically make sense to
anyone that hears it
however i was just recently speaking
with one of my friends on the schools
she’s thinking of applying to
and she said oh yeah i would never apply
to harvard
it’s way too small it’s too far from
home and it seems like the environment
there would be way too competitive for
me to be happy
but if i got in i would still go since
it’s harvard
it’s not enough to understand and agree
with an idea
to be able to change the way you live it
is essential that you put it into
practice
and retrain yourself to actually live
based on what makes you happy
however most of the high schoolers i
know aren’t going to abandon the
i’m going to work harder than everyone
else and get into the top college
mentality
and suddenly decide that it doesn’t
matter how prestigious the school i go
to is
as long as i can find happiness there
because it’s so hard to get people to
reject the idea that’s been ingrained in
them since they were kids
we need to be changing the narrative
from a much earlier age
disney channel needs to feature students
that are going to community college
because they weren’t ready to move away
from home yet not because they weren’t
smart enough to get in anywhere else
or students that have a very specific
astronomy program or music program at
some
lesser-known college that they’re really
excited about going to
for every kid that wants to go to
college there’s there are schools out
there that they will thrive at
and it’s doing them a great injustice
for the shows that they watch to preach
that there is such a narrow path
for smart high achieving students by
helping them understand that they should
be looking for their own unique path
based on what’s meaningful and
fulfilling to them personally
it would not only help to alleviate some
of the stress surrounding an
ever more competitive college admissions
process
but it would also help them build a life
that will lead them to more long-term
happiness
thank you
you