Happiness, Part II

This is a related post concerning the 60-Minutes story about happiness.
Ben-Shahar says that it's not just those overindulging in work who are unhappy: "There's a lot of unhappiness on college campuses. And it's not just at Harvard. Over 94 percent of college students nationwide are stressed and overwhelmed. And students are paying a very high price for this pressure." I've witnessed this as a high school teacher in a district with extraordinarily high expectations for kids: in athletics, in academics, and especially in getting an acceptance letter to a prestigious college. The problem with competitiveness for getting into college is that it's a game with unknowable rules. As a freshman in high school, you don't know if you're heading to the big leagues or the bush leagues for college choices. You don't know the kind of ACT score you'll get. The ACT will determine if you're headed, generally, the kind of college you're headed to. And even if you could know that you're going to post a 34 on the ACT, you don't know if that's going to land you at the University of Michigan or Standford. So, you try to make sure that you have all the attributes that will shoot you into the highest collegiate orbit -- volunteering at the animal shelter, joining the debate team, the chess team, the Gaussians, Model U.N., and the yearbook. It's the unknowability of the college-selection process that makes it so stressful. You don't know how much is good enough. Maybe you should add another club? Maybe you should START a club? The most strategic students are thinking about maximizing themselves every second of the day.