Photo Courtesy of Neil Rubino

A health professional educates students about stress at WJ’s first-ever health summit on Feb. 27.

When I was in elementary school and my class went to a school assembly, the teachers would generally say something along the lines of “Alright now everyone, let’s give so-and-so our undivided attention,” in syrupy-sweet voices. During the first ever Health and Wellness Seminar at WJ, neither principal Jennifer Baker nor principal intern Afie Mirshah-Nayyar mimicked our elementary school teachers as students entered the auditorium. Both Baker and Mirshah-Nayyar addressed the audience of teenagers in polite and familiar tones, and temporarily achieved almost complete silence in the room. Unfortunately, the silence that fell did not last for very long.

During the speeches of Dr. David Jobes and Dr. Colleen Roche, the keynote speakers at the summit, the audience became increasingly rowdy- especially during Jobes’ talk. As I sat in the auditorium and watched the other students turn to gossip and joke around with their friends, I was ashamed. I believe that as a general audience (at least during the second half of the summit), many students were very disrespectful, both to Jobes and to Roche. If I had been standing in Jobes’ or Roche’s shoes right then, I know that I would have thought that the WJ students had absolutely no idea how fortunate they were to be attending the summit in the first place.

No, the health summit may not have directly affected the stress and anxiety that countless students at WJ experience on a daily basis, as it was intended to. It did not offer a magical solution to the physical, mental and/or emotional problems that trouble us and stem from our stress and anxiety. What it did offer was a series of honest, down-to-earth and realistic solutions to our specific ailments, and information about the causes of the ailments themselves. The summit did not inform students of an instant and ridiculously simple way to solve all of our problems because there is none.

The very fact that our administration and volunteers worked for months to organize this summit means a lot. Although the summit did not physically subtract anything from the intense workload that students receive, which often causes stress and anxiety for them, it presented options for students to explore ways to help them deal with these feelings. The rest of the work (yes, more homework) is left for the students to do- because our administrators and teachers can only carry us so far.

However, some of the students in the auditorium that morning did not seem to agree. Hoots, jeers, and laughter could be heard during Jobes’s speech, and remained (although to a lesser degree) after Mirshah-Nayyar reprimanded the students in the auditorium. Both Jobes and Roche are licensed, hard-working and busy professionals. My mom has even used one of Jobes’ five books in her job as a social worker. Both Jobes and Roche offered different things at the summit. While Jobes addressed stress from a biological standpoint and presented strategies for stress management as an expert in psychology and suicidology, Roche spoke to the audience about how she has personally dealt with stress in her life and how she manages it. Roche also emphasized that although she did not attend an Ivy League school for either her bachelor’s degree or for medical school, and went to state schools for both, she has had a successful career. I believe that the information they provided was especially pertinent to students, because many in Montgomery County are under a lot of pressure academically in the hope of getting into prestigious universities and having a successful in the future. This pressure almost always causes stress and anxiety for students, and if we do not manage our stress properly, it can get out of control.

Don’t you think that Jobes and Roche had more sophisticated things to do and other people and tasks demanding their attention on that Friday morning? They probably did, and yet they still chose to dedicate two hours of their time to speaking to an auditorium full of high school students about topics that were relevant to their daily lives- and were treated disrespectfully for their efforts. This disrespectful attitude reflects poorly on WJ, and I believe that both Jobes and Roche deserved better than the ridicule they received.