Summary Of Today's Exhausted Superkids By Frank Bruni

Précis
Frank Bruni’s article, “Today’s Exhausted Superkids”(2015), condemns the social standards of perfection inflicted on teenagers during their high school years. Bruni supports his claim by acknowledging the stress teenagers experience on a regular basis, providing evidence from books relating to the topic, and questioning the extent of how insane the desire for college has become. Bruni’s purpose is to help push people to redefine success in order to help the youth become less focused towards a societal goal of higher education that causes countless children to become insane due to constant panic to earn a spot in the Ivy Leagues. Due to the topic of the article it is mainly written to college admissions and adults in order to address

the detachment of the youth from the outside world and the obsession for a college education.
Response
Frank Bruni delineates a disappointed outlook on today’s younger generation. In our society, everyone is constantly consumed with what steps they need in order to make the cut. This is mainly due because we are in “communities where academic expectations run the highest” (para. 19), meaning that these high schoolers constantly feel pressured to exceed basic standards. He makes the argument successful by revealing the harsh realities that everyday student endure. By doing this, he invokes a feeling of shock and guilt. Bruni tries to relate to the target audience by comparing and contrasting the struggle of too much sleep to the “five hours” (para 18) that most kids in this generation receive on a regular basis, in order to make them question the preset standards. It is critical to address this serious setback that has been pushing the younger generation because it creates detrimental health and mental effects. If everyone were to reformulate the way to gain approval, then teens would be able to discover what they are truly passionate about.