Pressures have become one of the known factors that affect a students life.

Anyone who
passed through becoming a student has felt once in their lives the feeling of stressful demands
with schoolwork and examinations. Every load felt, however, is tolerated because of the desire
of students is to get excellent marks. As the world gets more competitive, students are
pressured more and more to achieve success. Getting good grades has become one of the
goals students today are aspiring for. It has been perceived that a good mark from school can
place someone to a decent job and make that person stand out from others especially when it
comes to interviews and conversations (Misra & Castillo, 2004). With such belief, students
neglect on the negative effects of the pressure they are encountering because they want to
maintain high grades. The purpose of this essay is to expose the effects of pressure on students
to get good grades; these are extreme stress, cheating and changing of the attitude.

All the stress experienced by a student from their parents is considered one of the
effects of pressure handed to them to have good grades. Although many parents think that
pressuring their kids to get good grades may be helpful, in reality, it can become overbearing.
Many students want to make their parents proud but the additional pressure to do well add
much more stress and worries in their life. According to The Stanford News, Pressure by
parents and schools to achieve top scores has created stress levels among student, beginning
as early as elementary school, that are so high that some educators regard it as a health
epidemic, said Denise Clark Pope, a lecturer in the School of Education (Palmer, 2005).
Moreover, the effect of such pressure can lead to the negative health of students. Alany Marcus,
a North Springs social studies teacher, says, The number one cause of visits to Vaden Health
Center used to be relationships, but now is stress and anxiety among students," she said
(Krishnan & Sequeira, n.d.). As students try to put up with having good test scores, they tend to
have lack of sleep, which made the bodies of students become sick. The illness received can
also lead to dangerous reactions of the body since it is a necessity for a person to have enough
sleep for the body to gain energy and strength.
Another effect of pressure on students to get good grades is cheating. A recent study in
2010 from the Rutgers Management Education Center stated that 75 percent of students that
were interviewed admitted to cheating. Students voice a number of reasons for cheating:
parental demands, lack of time, intense competition for scholarships. Sometimes cheating can
seem like the only option for overstressed, underprepared students (Bushweller, 1999). We
have been aware of plagiarism being the cause of many violations done by students. This can
either be for their research paper, thesis paper or just a simple homework. There are also
incidents of cheating in examinations through copying of others answers and putting them on
the test paper, recognizing them as ones own. These sinful acts are the effects of the belief that
good grades can send you off to better jobs and a more secured future.
The most alarming of all the effects of pressure on students to get high grades is the
changing of the attitude. This particular outcome is definitely disturbing because values and
morals become affected. Extreme stress and cheating are two reasons that can be blamed for
such difference to happen. According to an interview conducted by Palmer (2005) to Ms. Denise
Clark Pope, students as she said, know that cheating is wrong; they tell me they wish they did
not do it. But they feel like the most important thing they do is to get the grades by hook or by
crook (Palmer, 2005). As the statement goes, honesty, respect and integrity have all been
violated for the sake of possessing a good grade.

Dealing with all the effects of pressure on maintaining an excellent grade comes with a
price. It results in extreme stress, cheating and the worst of all, changing of the attitude. All
these made a clear understanding of what learning really is about. It is not a matter of only
getting a good grade but rather learning with understanding and receiving the grades that one
truly deserves (Conner, Pope, & Galloway, 2009). As for this, students must realize that
education is in fact teaching people not only academically but morally.

References

Bushweller, K. (1999). Student cheating: a morality moratorium?. The American School

Board Journal, 18(6), 24-32.

Conner, J., Pope, D., & Galloway, M. (2009). Sucess with Less Stress (1st ed.). Retrieved
from

https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:mf751kq7490/Conner_Pope_Galloway_EL2009.pdf
Krishnan, L. & Sequeira, A. Stress Among College Students and How to Combat it.

SSRN Electronic Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2041423

Misra, R. & Castillo, L. (2004). Academic Stress Among College Students: Comparison of
American and International Students. International Journal Of Stress Management, 11(2),

132-148. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.11.2.132
Palmer, B. (2005). Pressure for good grades often leads to high stress, cheating,
professors say. Stanford University. Retrieved 22 April 2016, from
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/february23/cheat-022305.html