<p>I’ve come across similar research in recent years, one article in particular appeared in New York magazine a while back, excellent article and worth a google search. I am a child of the 70s and now have a daughter who is a senior in high school. Thinking back to my own high school years, I have some painful memories of being an insecure, unfocused and under confident adolescent. I don’t blame my parents for this fact as my parents were not much different than most of their generation. We were not raised by parents who were immersed in every aspect of our lives, what they call helicopter parents now. My parents were living there own lives and did not, for whatever reason, make a habit of telling us kids how smart or how pretty or how creative we were. We were simply left to grow up & make our way in the world. That is not to say that I felt unloved. My own daughter and I daresay most of her peers, have grown up with the benefit of pedagogical enlightenment. We now know that a positive self image is essential for academic and social adjustment. There are times I could have used a little of that parental doting parents are now famous for. However, there is a difference between bolstering your child’s ego and creating an ego maniac. It’s one thing to nurture a positive self-image, but it’s quite another to fill little Johnny or Jenny’s head with messages such as you are better than most, you are smarter than most and you are NEVER GOING TO FAIL. I see this type of child from time to time and it’s not pretty. These children tend to be very narrow minded and full of themselves. I suspect that when Johnny or Jenny get out in the real world, away from the sheltered and unrealistic hype of their parents, life gets pretty tough. I think a good rule of thumb is always praise a childs achievements, never make excuses for their failures, and teach them that we are all on an even playing field…we all have within us the potential to be our best.</p>
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<p>That’s right. In our very litigious society there is always a tendency to blame someone for our or our children’s shortcomings.</p>
<p>My D also has a required 4 hour minimum of homework per day, with projects on weekends - she is a day student at a competitive prep school. At that school, 4 years ago 6 students had 4.0s; since then there has not been a single 4.0 graduate. The grading rubic for tests, papers and homework states: all work as assigned = C. Some better then average = B. All aspects of an assignment above and beyond = A. Hense one fights one has to claw to get a B.</p>
<p>But at the pubic HS across the street, homework is rare and As are plentiful. </p>
<p>This comparison shows that colleges are facing wide discrepancies in what any grade point average means. And when scholarships and internship appointments are based on GPA, the student who strives to attend a top HS and take tough classes gets screwed, and the no-homework student gets the bennies need to get into top colleges.</p>
<p>^ ditto, ditto, ditto and in reference to your last sentence, you have no idea how much this impacts admissions, especially if the colleges do not take the time to examine the high schools in question…</p>
<p>The research method for this “study” is questionable.</p>
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<p>I want to know what exactly their research method is for measuring arrogance.</p>
<p>Wow. just wow. This is the confirmation I was looking for all my life. My parents have always had unusually high expectations for me, and so far I’ve done the best I could with what I had to work with. But I still know I’m going to get rejected from the Ivies (because I ALWAYS lose in games of chance lol), and my parents will think they have failed. and I’ll end up going to a public state university where I know I wont be challenged at all, like in high school. It disappoints me so much, but all of it is out of my control. This article is great because when I get rejected, I can show my parents how unrealistic their expectations are. If I get in to H (I have a 50% shot), more power to them :(</p>
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<p>You’ve never been to a public U, how would you know seriously? This is just more of the same Ivy elitism I see all the time on these boards. I’m sorry if you think the venerable Ivies are the only institutions that can give you a good undergraduate education.</p>
<p>Millerlite: are you being deliberately ironic (and am I more than slightly obtuse)? You are trying to confront your parents’ “unrealistic…expectations” but you think you have a 50% chance at Harvard? Look at Harvard’s admission statistics on their common data report.</p>
<p>For those of you who are interested, the “research report” for this study appears to be [url=<a href=“http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/19_11_inpress/twenge.pdf]here[/url”>http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/19_11_inpress/twenge.pdf]here[/url</a>].</p>
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I’m not usually one to point out typos, but this caught me unawares and I snorted soda up my nose. :)</p>
<p>Alex</p>
<p>oh Alex…you and I share similar sophomoric sense of humor. I’m spellcheckin my posts from now on!</p>
<p>I think the self-esteem movement is part of the reason anxiety and depression are on the rise. After our generation was raised to believe that we can achieve and be anything we want, many of us had those teachings unveiled against us and we became disillusioned.
Some of us may feel pressured to live up to the expectations of the adults whom told us we could be some one brilliant when we get older and that induces anxiety. It also does not help that the job market and college/graduate acceptances of getting more and more competitive every year or that a college degree is not just a leg up anymore as it was in the past, but considered simply a standard for many careers these days.
It may also be depressing for many young adults that their dreams did not come true and that they are not special or unique after all. It also does not help that the media shoves opulent wealth down our throats by showing us what most will never have.</p>
<p>It is as if nobody wants to accept that they are average anymore. If we’re going to push above average standards, we can’t coddle these kids into thinking they’re precocious, but instead we must believe in hard work and show them what it really takes to make great achievements.</p>
<p>Personally, my parents weren’t the type to always say I’m brilliant no matter what, so I usually believe them when they give me a complement. Most adults on the other hand, I’m not so sure… Sometimes I do wonder if I truly have any special talents or is it only a ploy to raise my self-confidence and many others my age.
Then again, when I was in high school, there were quarterly academic award ceremonies and everyone did not get an award. By the time I was in junior year, they stopped rewarding B-honor roll and gave out awards by cum laude, manga cum laude, summa cum laude. The the principle would strike worry into us by saying we better study hard because there are millions in our grade all over the country competing against us. I don’t know about my classmates, but it did not motivate me, it just made me feel like I was not on par with the real “future leaders of America”. 
I’m glad that the entire school did not get awards though.</p>
<p>That’s life for us. All we can do is try our best.</p>
<p>I planned for the worst case scenario. I’m doing alright as of now.</p>
<p>I’m still waiting on suggestions. As an overconfident teenager, what am I to do to fix this most terrible situation?</p>
<p>^ Overconfidence is not terrible, but it does set you up for failure. The question is: Will you be overconfident, or even confident at all when you fail? :)</p>
<p>I am being deliberately ironic (glad you caught up on that). and gthopeful, my state school is not a challenge at all. i know. took classes there. and im basically not allowed to apply to other high tier private/public schools, so I’d be stuck at the state university.</p>
<p>Im not an Ivy elitist. at all. i know there are other schools that give great educations, but they are not in my options. sorry for not clarifying :(</p>
<p>Millerl1te - how are they not in your options? Did your parents forbid you from applying to any other schools but your state school and the Ivy Leagues? Sounds like pretty terrible parents, but I know how you feel… I really want to go to Rice or Bowdoin for undergraduate, but my Mom will be mad as hell if I choose either over Yale (which I kind of hate)… I told her I would go to Yale if I got in knowing that I probably wouldn’t, but now that I’ve submitted my SCEA app (yes, another urging by my counselors and parents… and just as an indicator for me if I should apply to more easier schools before the deadline’s up), I’m worried as hell that I might get in and feel obligated to go. I know that sounds twisted to you guys on CC, but it’s the truth.</p>
<p>Anyways, to address the issue at hand:</p>
<p>What it looks like to me is that the people performing these studies are jealous of the ambition and self confidence that adolescents and teenagers have during this generation that most of them lack in their old age. When I read “x% of high school children are more confident and happy with themselves today than in 1975” like it’s a bad thing, I can only think of the dean in “Patch Adams” accusing Patch of practicing “excessive happiness.”<br>
It’s not wrong to dream, or to think “you are unique,” because frankly, everyone is unique. Even the people who stick to cliques like religions are unique - they will not all grow up to have the same type of husband/wife, the same job, and likely not the same outlook/philosophy on life and society. If you don’t dream, you cannot succeed, or fail, or learn anything because you have nothing to look forward to - you will be depressed for your entire life if you don’t have a dream to work towards.<br>
On the prospect of many teens thinking that they will make 60K/year when they get out of college: the blame for this mostly lies in the media, which glorifies luxury and the general idea of having a lot of money. This is portrayed as the ideal lifestyle lived by almost everyone on television (I’ve never seen a single episode of a television show portraying happy poor people), and because of it, teenagers think that it’s the right thing to ‘follow the money.’ This is setting a teen up for failure not because he or she most likely cannot become rich (which is most likely true anyways), but because it’s not what the kid really loves. I mean, studying business for years in college is all right for the people who actually love the thought of being businessmen (can’t see how that’s possible myself), but I imagine it would be like years of living hell if you’re just in it for the money. Similarly, studying to become an engineer for the job security or money is also a path destined to lead to failure. The same holds true for practically every discipline possible to study. (Just an example: my parents, both with at least a masters in some type of molecular biology (my father has a Ph.D.), seemed a few years ago to have been making quite a bit of money, so I tried convincing myself, perhaps subconsciously or perhaps not, that I loved molecular biology so that I myself could participate in what I used to see as the only worthwhile science of today. Now, I’m stuck in a molecular biology internship that I’m not too fond of where I have to design, publish, and present an actual project… and I hate it. I wish now, when I’m applying to college as an earth science/ocean science major, that I had spent more time studying geology and the other earth sciences in high school and paid less attention to biology and chemistry… but what can you do?). All I’m basically trying to say right now is that many teens probably think that they will be more successful because they have convinced themselves that they love a discipline where they will make a lot of money due to the portrayal on television of a society in which everyone can have what they want because they have a lot of money. Then they find out they hate after a few months or a few years in college. I’m not saying this is true about everyone - just a theory of why so many kids think they will strike it rich after college and only some of them actually do. Of course, some of that is also due to laziness, actual intelligence, etc.</p>
<p>I feel like I’ve ranted enough about this… by the way, I’m just trying to convince myself that life still has meaning after reading all the crap in this thread. I mean, if everyone isn’t unique and is destined to lead the same life of failure and unhappiness, why live that life at all when billions of others are living it around you?</p>
<p>^Yeah, that’s why I really don’t understand this argument. So what? Am I supposed to suddenly become an emo cutter to ensure that I’m not overconfident?</p>
<p>The way to fix the problem is by beefing up the curriculum in schools. It doesn’t accomplish anything when people tell teenagers, “You’re too confident and wildly unrealistic. Try to question your every move and realize that you’re scum, and you’re going nowhere in life.” That’s the message I get from this news story.</p>
<p>On a side note, it doesn’t matter that Fox News didn’t write this article. Part of reporting in today’s journalism world is the careful selection of articles from other sources. Fox News not only reports its own conservative propaganda, but it also chooses to report the conservative propaganda of other agencies.</p>
<p>“On a side note, it doesn’t matter that Fox News didn’t write this article. Part of reporting in today’s journalism world is the careful selection of articles from other sources. Fox News not only reports its own conservative propaganda, but it also chooses to report the conservative propaganda of other agencies.”</p>
<p>YahooHealth is now conservative propaganda? Haha.</p>
<p>By the way, Twenge does not weave any political bias into her work. She is obviously biased, as are all such academics, but it’s not “conservative” versus “liberal.”</p>
<p>A few months ago there was an article on this board about how the average high school junior male thought they would make $170k/year and the average high school junior female thought they would make $116k/year. And I think they meant it in real dollars b/c high school juniors wouldn’t know what inflation was. And considering only 5% of the US population makes over $100k, I guess lots of these kids will be disappointed. Damnit, maybe I’m one of them haha.</p>