Report Card Distribution (Every) Day

When I was in elementary school, the only people I was ever compared with were (A) my older sister and (B) my classmates. Growing up, our parents put a lot of emphasis on academic excellence. My mom would remember by heart the exact score I got for the Math test on Tuesday and what I scored for the Science test on Friday.

If I got an almost full mark of 98, the question that’d follow was “Who got 100?”

If I scored a full mark, the follow-up question would be “Who else?”

Every time the teacher called out the scores of everyone in front of the classroom, I’d take notes because my parents would ask about it. I didn’t really care back then whether others were doing well, but in those years, occasions like these were one of the very few avenues of self-comparison I’d involve myself in.

Every time I didn’t get a full mark and someone else did, I would ask myself, “what did they do differently?“.

The only time of each year our parents would come to school was when the school hand out report cards and called those who were top of the class to the stage in front of all of the kids and their parents and give them presents. It was also the only time of the year that all kids and their parents would gather in one place. My sister and I never skipped a year of going up to the stage.

I guess during those years of the early 2000s, once or at most twice a year was the maximum frequency of parents comparing themselves and their kids. People would engage themselves in hushed discussions about X’s mom’s designer handbag or the clothes she was wearing. Some comments made among themselves were of the sports car parked in the parking lot, whose car is that? People would come to my mom with me and my sister by her sides visibly holding the top-of-class presents and they’d make flattering comments about the way my mom raised her daughters.

I certainly don’t think I was doing well because I was a prodigy or anything like that. Looking back, my sister and I studied SO much without knowing that we did. I simply didn’t know what other kids were up to when they get home after school. We’d spend 2-3 hours studying every single night without fail, thinking that other kids engage in similar habits.

I still remember how shocked I was when I learned that one of my friends had not studied at all for a test that was coming the day after. By that time, I was already going through the materials for the test the third time.

Even though my earlier life might sound stressful and dreadful from what I described, I can say with enough confidence that I was not under a lot of stress. Ignorance was truly bliss. I didn’t know what other kids were spending their time at home and what they were doing, I simply thought that studying habits I had were something everyone had to go through. I sympathized with people who failed a test thinking that it must be hard on them, discounting any possibility that they might have studied less than I did.

It would certainly make me upset if Instagram existed back then and I knew that other kids were watching their favorite cartoons instead of studying.

I would certainly feel jealous if I knew that other kids would get new toys at random times from their parents instead of periodically only after being top-of-class each year.

Seeing it from this perspective now, I’m very grateful that I didn’t spend my childhood living in an era where information about other people’s lives is immensely available. Being in social media as young kids or their parents these days resemble coming to report card distribution day with a big difference of it happening every day instead of once a year.

Imagine feeling the stress and fatigue of coming home after a report card distribution day as a kid or a teenager. Wondering endlessly when you get to be on stage or getting anxious about losing your spot on the stage the next time.

For parents, it’s double the stress. Endless thoughts of what should I wear to look presentable? Will my kids do well this time? What will other moms say if I bring this bag? What will the teachers say about my kids?

Once or twice a year was already a burden for a lot of people. Encountering these kinds of thoughts and worries every day can be quite taxing. The stress and anxiety we’re putting on ourselves and at each other by the innocent act of sharing about our lives and what we do are unbelievable.

These days you can even be aware of how much breast milk a new mom is producing from her Instagram story, or how someone stores their kids’ underwear in their wardrobe, Marie-Kondo style. Individually, this kind of information might seem harmless and even informative. Collectively, it’s another day of report card distribution. Without them realizing, people are being pulled down the rabbit hole of self-comparison.

This blog post is not another argument against social media or against people sharing their lives on it. I recently had a realization after having a talk with my sister about how different the challenges young kids and their parents today have to face compared to when we were kids. What’s depressing is that there is no easy way out of this. Like how one can’t simply avoid coming to school to retrieve their kids’ report cards, quitting social media is not that simple.

For young kids and teenagers, not engaging in social media like the rest of the pack can be the source of being left out or in the worse case, being bullied. For parents, they risk of not being able to keep track of what their own kids, other kids, or other parents are up to. If I were a parent, I certainly wouldn’t want my kids to miss out on something just because of my egoistic desire of shutting the outside world.

With all these considerations, the thing I hope people can take away from this is that we should be more compassionate and think twice before saying things like “kids these days…” or “parents these days…”.

Young kids and their parents these days have different challenges they should roll their sleeves for. Teenagers have new kinds of pressures put on them. Like many problems in life, the way they’re presented and tackled can be very different across generations. As we might not experience it firsthand, we might find little relevance, thus not really understanding them.

Even though things might be looking stable for us and our peers from the same generation, they can be constantly changing and sometimes crumbling for those that come after us.

If you’ve reached all the way here, thank you for reading!

I create this little space on the internet to write my thoughts and reflections on being a human, a woman, and a software developer. I don't have Instagram/Twitter but I can be found on LinkedIn. Feel free to contact/give feedback/tell me your story through my email: ivanaairenee@gmail.com