Golden time or golden lies?

The one thing I constantly hear as the days go by is, 'You're still in school; this is your golden period,' and I can't help but think to myself ', Am I colour blind?' because I see none of it.

If you're an adult reading this, who has 'seen life' and lived it 'more than I have', - spare me the scoffs and pity, and for once,  try hearing me out.

It's so funny to me that this school time is supposedly our golden period because everyone is miserable. Sure, school might have been the time for you 10-12 years ago, my dear adult, but it isn't the same anymore. 

From the moment I wake up, I am constantly reminded of the fact of how stupid and useless I am. Insecurities eat me.

Perfect bodies and faces flood my feed. Billboards of flawless students loom over me. Everything screams, 'HA! Look at you; you're nothing.  .. then you enter a School that treats students like donkeys while some get their way due to unabashed favouritism. We are graded and ranked based on how much we remember rather than how much we understand. There is this unsaid competition we have with our peers where the purpose has become to beat rather than engage meaningfully. The ranking has trained us to compare where the goal is to get the next 100, get that next rank, and get that next topper tag while coaching and corporations monetize our desperation. And after a long day of oscillating between emotions (and tuitions), you come back to adult parents who were themselves broken children.

And even though all of this sounds petty, it might surprise you how bullying, harassment and mental illness are common among students.

1. According to a UNICEF study, at least 36% of Indian students are subject to harassment and bullying on school campuses. Children are subjected to name-calling, shaming, exclusion, online trolling, and even physical harm. There’s an immeasurable emotional and psychological toll on children, with the potential to lead to anxiety, depression, and in some tragic cases, even suicide. (Source: power of 0)

2. Peer pressure exerts a significant influence, with a staggering 85% of high school students acknowledging its impact. This pressure extends to risky behaviours, as 75% of adolescents have experimented with alcohol due to peer influence. (Source: Medicircle)

3. A longitudinal study on children reported that 80% of them were diagnosed with at least one psychiatric condition before they were 21 years old, which included anxiety and depression. (Source: Sage Journal)

4. According to the 2022 report by the National Crime Records Bureau, 13,044 student suicides were recorded, reflecting a slight decrease of 0.3% from the previous year. However, over a span of 10 years (2013-2022), student suicides increased by 64%, with 1,03,961 suicides reported, marking a troubling trend.

Not one day goes by when I open the newspaper and do not find a student suicide news coming from cities that we call ‘metropolitan’ or institutes we call ‘prestigious’.It disgusts me how we, as a country, have normalized student suicides. We have allowed students to exist in a system that either deprives students emotionally or comples them end it.  

I honestly don't need these stats to even talk about this because you can pick any student you know around you and ask them how they feel. Ask them if they think they are enough? Ask them if they feel emotionally detached from everything? For the most part, you'll hear something you wouldn't have expected. 

Even if we leave depression, anxiety, harassment and bullying aside, we don't know what to do. We are clueless and scared. And we have no one to talk about it. Statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that approximately 10% of adolescents are lonely, which is 130 million teens! 

You know what most of my conversations with my friends are? On the future. It is either ‘I don't know what I should be doing’ to ‘I don't think im good enough for this.’ and who do we go to? We can't go to our parents because we want them proud, and we cannot go to our teachers because, obviously, we aren't working hard enough.

And the worst bit. I can't even ask the system what they can do for us, because the system is oblivious of the fact that we are miserable. The system believes everything is okay, and no one can challenge that.

Or you know what? Who am I to be the student representative? All of this is a sham. We, as Genz, are stupid and miserable always. We have it so much easier than everyone else. We don't know how to be grateful, and we are the root cause of all our problems. Kya anxiety, kya depression, kya loneliness, all of this is in our heads. Great. We just need to zip it up and accept that we are just cribbing. Problem solved.

But my next question is, if life is actually tough after school and not so golden anymore, why aren't we being prepared for it? Why aren't we being given lessons on how to master Adulthood 101? I, having turned 18 recently, have no shame in admitting that I really don't know how I will manage my money in the future. Why aren't we taught financial literacy? We are numb. We are agitated. We are happy. We are confused. All at the same time. Why aren't we taught how to manage our emotions? Why aren't we taught skills that will help us be good people, if not the best humans? Why aren't we sensitized to real-world issues instead of having them brushed under the rug?

I am not saying that being an adult is easy and being a kid is tough. No. It isn't. The responsibilities of being a grown-up with people depending on you for your support are tough. I get why adults say this is our golden time because, As a kid, I'll never be freer in terms of responsibility as I am now, and that is the truth. Even with that, I want to look forward to what's in store. I want to live the ups and downs of life because that's what I am: hopeful. 

This time truly can be my golden period—our golden period, and I endorse it, but what irritates me is that we aren't allowed to live it that way. We are part of a system that systematically fails to not only address our problems but also break us in ways that are unrepairable.

I don't know what I can even do other than just ask the people, the system, and the teachers to either help us make this our golden period or just prepare for apocalyptic adulthood.