Lying back in their seat, a student sees an artifact from a long-graduated senior: a painted ceiling tile. Starting in 2025, seniors will be able to participate in creating colorful additions to an otherwise drab ceiling, and immortalize themselves with a message, a scenic landscape, or whatever they believe should hang above the heads of future students. Although seniors having the option to express themselves openly feels rare. In the rigorous environment of a college prep school, self-expression can feel second to schoolwork, as grades and deadlines often overshadow individuality. The colorful ceiling tiles, as small as they may be and as much as it might hurt a student’s neck to look at them, embodies the desire to be seen, heard and remembered in a system that often prioritizes conformity over creativity.
It’s important to continually embrace small acts of expression, even through the muck of schoolwork. A large part of a student’s personality is developed through their years in high school; it’s the foundation for how they may express themselves for the rest of their lives.
The music they listen to, the friends they meet and the clothes they wear are integral mediums of expression for students, letting them explore their ideas of themselves. A student’s growth in discovering themselves is comparable in importance to the growth they experience when challenged academically, so why let policies suppress that growth? To suppress these mediums through stricter school policies, like not allowing baggy clothes or headphones during lunch, stops students from growing their personalities and developing who they are.
Last year’s dress code change is a step in the right direction, allowing for things such as hair dyed in unnatural colors. According to the National Education Association, stricter dress codes have been shown to negatively affect students’ grades; the stricter that dress codes are enforced, the worse a student affected by these codes’ grades will become. Therefore, the way in which a student is allowed to express themselves can hinder or propel their educational performance. Yet, there is still far more that can be done to help students in their journey of finding and expressing themselves. It’s great seniors can paint ceiling tiles again, but it’s strange there was a period where they were seen as a distraction. There are countless more things a school can do to promote expression and a healthy individuality.
Self-expression is a vital part of mental health, allowing students to process their emotions and experiences in a meaningful and personal manner. Processing emotions is an important step of maturing, and necessary for post high-school life. Shouldn’t a college prep school prepare students for more than just the academics in college? Students should be able to attend college with a healthy idea of themselves because of the experimentation they went through in high school. Having confidence in yourself and being able to overcome the emotional hurdles of becoming completely independent in college.
In a school environment where academic achievement often takes precedence, small acts of self-expression, like the painted ceiling tiles, provide a vital outlet for individuality. When drowning in the piles of homework and tests, self-expression acts as a much-needed breath of fresh air. Art classes shouldn’t be thrown to the side, students should not be condemned for wearing the hat of their favorite sports teams, and a school must embrace as many mediums as possible for students to confidently express themselves. It’s their duty to continually encourage such acts of expression and understand that the importance of middle school and high school stretches beyond academic achievement.
