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A guidance counselor, center, talks with students about colleges. Many students start feeling the jitters of rejection as soon as college applications arrive.
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Students halfway through their last year of high school are feeling both elated and scared about their proximity to “the end.” It’s exciting to graduate to the next level, but it’s also a journey into the unknown, the land Hamlet calls “that undiscovered country.”
My experience as both student and teacher has taught me that the manic and irresponsible behavior we label “senioritis” is really just anxiety about setting out on the next big journey. That doesn’t make the behavior any easier to live with. Those who remember their own senior years or who have recently inhabited the same house as a high school senior know the symptoms well.
Seniors exhibit arrogance and insecurity, laziness and bursts of energy, insomnia and sleeping sickness, hostility and affection. They are poised at the edge of the nest ready to take flight, having made life in the nest so unpredictable that it’s easy for Mom or Dad to look forward, at times, to having that nest all to themselves!
When you “live” with 148 students at the edge of their respective nests, life is no more predictable than it is in their homes. One day a student is hard-working and considerate, and the next day that same student is full of ennui and sarcasm. A calm, “together” personality can come unraveled in a weekend and be unable to do any work the rest of the week. Some students have such high levels of anxiety, they simply disappear for days at a time.
Far more common, though, is the student who stays up late, then sleeps through class and arrives, all smiles, with an excused pass. There is an “illness” that attacks about 30 minutes before school starts and disappears one or two hours later, after a nice nap.
This turbulence is connected to the high stress level of college applications and the arrival of those much-anticipated letters of acceptance and rejection. Few of my students are admitted everywhere they apply, so rejection is common. And at 17 or 18, most have never been rejected. I still remember the sting I felt when that skinny envelope arrived; it’s something you never quite get over.
But eventually we get used to it. We are rejected by schools and prospective employers, or we may be unlucky in love. Rejection is a part of life and the senior year is as good a time as any to make its acquaintance.
I love teaching seniors, in part because my own senior year is fresh in my memory. I was as contradictory as they are, but there was as much joy that year as terror. I wish I’d known then what I know now.
As teachers and parents, we just have to have faith that the person who used to inhabit the skin of the disaffected, unhappy teenager before us is still there and will emerge in good time.
It happened to me, to my two children, and to the more than two thousand students I’ve taught. “That undiscovered country” always turns out better for my students than they think it will. If only I could convince them of that truth!
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University. E-mail her at ejacob1@gmu.edu.
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AP Test Taker said:
Yes! All five 5's and one 4, and I wrote "This is Sparta" on all of them! I even worked it into my Psychology free-response, so I didn't have to cross it out! :)
1 agree | 0 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
This is Sparta! Check Out! www.bunkerspy.com www.speedypocketbikes.com
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Examiner Reader said:
I did this :) Thanks for the 4, btw
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Examiner Reader said:
lol i wrote it on all the AP tests i took just to make whomever graded my tests laugh =) it's so cool that this actually worked!
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Examiner Reader said:
Hey ya. The point was not to make a political statement. The point was also not to throw our test grades to the winds. We did it to point out the impersonal and bureaucratic tendencies of the school system and the pointlessness of standardized tests. Also, for a laugh in the middle of a four hour exam that is no laughing matter for most of us... Don't patronize us. If we are taking the exam, its because we care enough about our academics to do so. If we wanted to "rebel" we wouldn't take the exam. Pointing out problems in a system we are part of is not rebelling. In America, that's what we do. We are a democracy. Also, just because we are teenagers doesn't mean we fall into the black-leather motorcycle hair grease image of a rebel to which you are confining us. Generalizations like that will always be harmful. And plus, that was your generation, not ours.
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Examiner Reader said:
Wrote on my AP world history and got a five, not bad for not studying ;)
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Middle Schooler said:
Lol I read that in a link from my High School friend. I wrote that and crossed it out in one of my big assignments. Apparently the teacher knew about the sparta thing, and she made me read the whole thing to the class XD --- I got an A, though :] ---
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Examiner Reader said:
i didnt write it in my essay but i wrote it in my booklet and wrote an entire convo about it. I wcouldnt find where to put it.
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Amanda Joy said:
this is awesome :) I am so glad I was a part of it. hahahaaaaa
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Alyssa Hoff said:
This is so hilarious! I feel like I'm a part of some kind of nation wide phenomenon! I wrote it in my AP World History exam. Got a 3 on it, which isn't that bad for not having studied. THIS IS SPARTA!!
2 agree | 2 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
I wrote it on my AP Eng Lang and APUSH exams. It was almost as fun writing it as I assume it was to read it. :) Got 5s on both, too.
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Jessica Sagers said:
YES!! Haha, I wrote this on my AP Bio, Lit and Stats exams (in hilarious and fitting contexts, of course), and got all 5s. :-) It's nice to be formally acknowledged.
4 agree | 3 disagree
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AP Tester said:
I wrote in multiple times in the middle of physics equations. GOT A 5!
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Examiner Reader said:
I'm so delighted to find your article! I had a flickr photo (of my cat) invited to be in a "group"/pool called "This is Sparta!).... but I didn't know the reference. Long live the internet.
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dragonboyjgh said:
i plan to do such if i ever take an ap test.
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Examiner Reader said:
i did it on both the Chem and teh Calc AB and got 1's on both... i doubt i would have gotten higher if i didnt though. i also did a few hand turkeys. proud member of the facebook group as well!
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AP European History said:
I made a 1. I didn't cross it out. I wrote it in a history test. This explains a lot.
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Chelsea Katan said:
We're the laughter generation, and I'm glad we made you enjoy the grading.
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Erica's reply to AP Lit reader below said:
My email is on the bottom of every column so if you want to return to reading question #3, let me know. I look forward to meeting you in person next year, and hope you hang in there. I agree, students tend to fall into formulaic writing for the test, a habit with my own high school students I tried to break--with very limited success. They'd compose interesting timed writings in class, then go into "test" mode and out would pop a 5 paragraph theme. Old habits die hard.
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Examiner Reader said:
Thanks, Erica. I was on question three for the first two years, but switched to question one this past session. I have seen some brilliant responses in the former; however, I still see so much "performance" of literary criticism and formulaic prose that often seems to come straight out of Cliff's notes (but with the way the test is set up, who can blame these students?). At least in question three, a grader can see a) an analysis of a piece of literature that is not by a dead white man (not that *I* don't love dead white men. They play a great and wonderful part in my dissertation. Still, it's refreshing to see that works such as _Beloved_ and _The God of Small Things_ have made the AP "Greatest Hits.") ; and b) A student can really show off his or her ability to critically think about a text. Yet, sadly, these moments are often few and far between for me.
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AP Test Taker said:
I wouldn't really call it teenager code for "don't tell us what to do" rather, we just thought it was funny, kinda like a boy laughing at a fart.
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AP Test Taker said:
I wouldn't really call it teenager code for "don't tell us what to do" rather, we just thought it was funny, kinda like a boy laughing at a fart.
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Wiki said:
I didn't know about the phenomena until we were let out of the Literature test and I overheard a friend talking about it. I asked my classmates, and about a quarter of them and written it! I took the Gov. test a few weeks later, so I wrote (and crossed out) "This is Sparta!" on my Government essay. It seemed more appropriate there, anyway. Thanks for the 4, by the way. I totally bombed the poetry explication.
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Erica Jacobs to the Reader below: said:
You are the reason I believe in the AP Lit test and come to the reading, year after year! I totally agree with your sympathy with the students, and your disappointment that they don't show more creativity and independence. I hope you are on Q3 next year; email me if you would like me to lobby for you on that question! Q3 is the question I love most, and usually allows students and readers the most latitude. Yours, Erica Jacobs
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Examiner Reader said:
(continued from below) I want to emphasize that I have the fullest respect for the teachers who instruct AP classes. You will never find teachers who are more dedicated to their students. Personally, I blame this corporate-funded, completely outdated, oppressive standardized test that cares more for scores than for real critical thinking. I'm proud of the students and their subversive antics. That, to me, gets a perfect score!
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Examiner Reader said:
I was an AP Literature reader in this past cycle, and I can confidently say I was delighted to see these students standing up against this oppressive, corporate-funded standardized test. We must look carefully at the reasons why these students invoked this particular scene from the film 300. In this scene, the messenger asks for complete submission to the hegemony and oppression of the massive Persian army. When Leonidas cries out to him, "This is Sparta!" he is speaking up for the particularity of his cultural, political, and geographical space. What often troubles me the most when I'm sitting in that freezing warehouse grading these exams is the eery similarity between the student essays. In a discipline that I feel should emphasize originality, creativity, critical thinking, and independent analysis, I am deeply disturbed by the endless barage of banal five paragraph essays that give me little to no insight into the student as an independent thinker.
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Examiner Reader said:
I said F the AP exame and turned it in only saying THIS IS SPARTA it was definetly work it hands down cant wait tell next year!
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Examiner Reader said:
I don't get "cute" when I write. Convergence and twain. People and situations. Read Thomas Hardy's "Jude The Obscure". Both people and situations change us. For better or worse. Dan.
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Examiner Reader said:
I took the AP World History Exam this year, and after massively bsing the writing portion I wrote "This is Sparta!" at the end because the test was already a fail in my mind.
9 agree | 8 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
To IB Student: I'm guessing you did not take the AP English exam. A free professional hint: use proper capitalization in your e-mail.
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Erica Jacobs said:
Thanks, Phil!
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Phil from NJ said:
Hey. Im the one that added you to wikipedia. Thank you for writing the column about us, it was well worthy of you being a footnote on wikipedia.
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IB Student said:
I took most of my AP exams last year as i am in the international baccalaureate program and we mostly take IB test in our senior year (this year for me). on the one exam that did not count for my diploma (economics), i decided to join in on the sparta fun. i didnt cross it out and actually incorporated it into my essay well (as well as some silly diagrams and pictures). im pretty sure they arent supposed to grade irrelevant stuff, only giving points for things the students did correctly and not taking away points for incorrect responses, so i think i might even still do well on it. and to reply to teachers, it was all just a fun thing to lessen all the stress and seriousness attached the these standardized exams that, in the long run, dont actually mean all that much and shouldn't have so much pressure placed within them.
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Examiner Reader said:
we aren't doing it as a political statement, we do it to be funny. the tests are scary to take and putting in funny little pop culture references makes it more tolerable. don't overanalyze us too much, we're here for a good time. :]
11 agree | 6 disagree
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Erica Jacobs to All AP Students: said:
Thanks to you, not only did the graders get many chuckles throughout the exam week, but we had something to talk about with the U.S. History and French graders, who were in "Nowhere Kentucky" (actually--it was Louisville, a lovely city) at the same time! So we did realize it wasn't just English. Some of my best friends are the test writers for English Lit, and they really do their best to make the exam fair yet still challenging, so don't be too hard on them! I hope you aced all your AP tests, and thank you all for making this by far the most read column I have ever written.
10 agree | 7 disagree
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another AP student said:
Mrs. Jacobs, You really hit the mark when you said that our little joke could only go so far because, we of course couldn't lose credit and crossed it out. I personally was hesitant to write it at all, but realized I really could not be marked down, and my mascot being the Spartans, I couldn't help myself. Also, some other graders are letting you know that we put "THIS IS SPARTA" in test such as psychology, and U.S. Government...we put it in all of our tests...even calculus. It was interesting to read your response to our little prank, I must say we half expected/hoped it would annoy you guys, although it is not the graders, but really the test writers that we loath! :)
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Erica Jacobs said:
To the last commenter: what a lovely comment--on leaving, on Tim O'Brien, on memories. I look forward to seeing you next year at the reading!
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Examiner Reader said:
Having had the privilege of just grading AP literature essays with Mrs.Jacobs in Louisville a couple of weeks ago, I obviously read her last two columns alluding to Harry Potter and "This is Sparta" with much pleasure. Nevertheless, her column on cleaning out her room touched a special nerve as The Things They Carried was a favorite in my Midwestern classroom as well. How O'Brien so deftly reaches out to our students of this Iraqi and Afghan war era is almost uncanny, probably because he is so adept at defining the paradoxes of war and coming of age in every century. A year ahead of Mrs. Jacobs in cleaning out my high school classroom for the college office, I can assure her that if she is like me, those memories she carried will remain textured while the boxes she brought home will hang around to haunt her. Nevertheless, now she can look at the AP exams as an introduction instead of a farewell since they are charting the beginnings of these students' college lives.
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Examiner Reader said:
This has spread beyond AP english exams. Recently while grading the EOC biology prompt the phrase "this is Sparta!" has been noted at least several dozen times. This shows that the prank has spread beyond AP exams and is rampant in other standardized tests as well. SSK in NJ
8 agree | 7 disagree
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Calculus said:
Having graded hundreds of calculus exams in KC, I can report many, many "This is Sparta" lines- none of them crossed out...
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Examiner Reader said:
I teach high school and find it difficult to talk with parents. I am finding that parents want me to notify them each time their child doesn't turn in an assignment. Really?! And, when am I supposed to do that? Any given assignment will have 5-40 students who don't turn it in. Am I supposed to call them all? I only get 45 minutes off per day - to plan the next day and get some grading done. I grade when I get home at night until near bedtime at least 3 nights out of the week. When we have parent-teacher conferences, almost no one shows up - and usually only the parents of the "good kids." It is so frustrating to feel like I have to be the child's parents' parent as well. Plus, I honestly can't remember after 5th period who in 1st - 4th didn't turn in something; I'm concentrating on 5th - 7th period classes and what is coming (I teach freshmen in the afternoon). People think that teaching is easy because we get time off in the summer; it is SO much harder than it looks.
8 agree | 7 disagree
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Mike from Jersey said:
I am one of the many students across the nation who are subject to the self-inflicted plague of AP testing. It's a grueling system if done correctly (by both teacher and student) that, in my opinion, can have its rewards. We really do feel powerless beneath the burgeoning anxiety and weight of upcoming AP's. My friends and I took "SPARTA" to heart and really made a group effort to study for the European exam. "SPARTA" gave us a little bit of hope- that we could SAY something back to these strangers who would be judging us- strangers that are just poor folks who would really rather be on vacation in Tahiti than in East-Nowherere, Nebraska systematically grading the stale work of individuals they neither care for or would ever meet. "SPARTA" helped us get prepared for exams. I would really like for there to be an article about the antics that the graders put on (there are some in the comments below). I also want to know where they found a set of Spartan armor in East-Nowhere, Kentucky.
13 agree | 9 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
"This is Sparta!" ended up in a lot of U.S. Govt. and Politics essays also. Having graded a whole bunch 'o' those essays, I have to admit it was kind of fun seeing the harmless example of rebellion in essay booklets where the student knew the answers, not so much fun when questions weren't anwwered. I won't automatically criticize the decision to draw a line through the phrase as a cop-out; maybe the message is that the kids have figured out that rebellion should also be practical at times!
9 agree | 8 disagree
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a "rebel" said:
The point was not to rebel. The point was to simply have one aspect of our AP week to look forward to. A joke that we knew was widespread and only meant as a way of letting off steam and giving the poor teachers who have to spend a week in nowhere, Kentucky grading thousands of exams something to laugh about.
17 agree | 8 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
We finished reading the AP Human Geography exam today. The Spartans were alive and well in Nebraska!
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Erica Jacobs said:
To Paul: Yes, my word "rebel" was a bit extreme. I really meant that students were making a counter-cultural statement by including something irrelevant in an important test. I did realize it was a joke--hence the lol! For the Psychology reader: thanks for reading the column! I can tell you have the proper AP spirit: we reward the students for what they do well.Keep reading, year after year. The students need you.
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Examiner Reader said:
I just arrived home yesterday from the AP Psychology read in Kansas City where we graded 132000 exams and would love to report to the students that that at least 35000 of those included "This is Sparta" or "This is madness". I would like to give a shout out to one student who actually incorporated it into his/her exam without having to strike through. The question called for a parental resolution of a child's temper tantrum and one extremely crafty student wrote something along the lines of "According to BF Skinner if the Smith- Garcia child is having a temper tantrum screaming 'This is Sparta, this is madness' the parent should take away a favorite toy (negative reinforcement) or punish the child with a time-out so the behavior will be less likely to continue." Good work, young Spartans. You all gave us entertainment for the week. On the last day of the read many came in Spartan armor...
10 agree | 8 disagree
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Paul Johnson said:
When are adults going to learn that every example of organized behavior by adolescents is not an act of rebellion. This article completely misinterprets what "This Is Sparta" means to teenagers. It is not a statement that can be put into other words. It essentially exists as a joke that can be used in response to someone stating something with the phrase "This is....(followed by an adjective, preferrebly "madness")." The phrase is popular because the movie is so ridiculously absurd. Take one of the most amazing battles from all of history and make a movie out of it using overly epic writing, directing, and acting, then cheese out the cgi as much as possible and you have something that any highschooler will be quoting for a long long time.
19 agree | 15 disagree
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Dr. Jacobs said:
Thanks for reading the column and have a great four years in college. Keep the "Sparta" spirit alive!
9 agree | 9 disagree
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Sarah Lee said:
Hello Dr. Jacobs! I enjoyed reading this column very much. Sadly, I wasn't one of the "rebels" but I'm glad that the Facebook group achieved their primary goal. ;] "This is Sparta!"
9 agree | 8 disagree
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