At LASA, for some, success and accomplishments are beginning to be measured by the amount of AP classes taken, highest test scores, minimal hours of sleep per night, or activities crammed within one singular day. The idea behind this behavior is related to the phenomenon of hustle culture. LASA students are members of a challenging and competitive school where everyone pushes themselves to their limits.
According to Humane Marketing, hustle culture originated in the 18th to 19th Century with the first industrial revolution in America. During that time, factories had pulled families off their farms and turned them into machines. This idea is also reinforced by the Protestant theology that hard work equals salvation. Fast forward to today, that culture has still not faded away.
A survey of the Liberator staff had yielded overwhelmingly polarized results regarding the impact of hustle culture on LASA, with 82.3% answering an 8 or above on a scale of 1 to 10 of “how much does hustle culture affects LASA?” Respondents mentioned issues relating grades and self-worth, constant competition and working based on the college application instead of passion. According to PBS, hustle culture is a common place for high school students, especially in magnet schools. Students are consistently worried about losing time when they aren’t studying. Students are always so future oriented that they stop caring for the present. We are stuck constantly looking at a better future and worrying about ways to achieve it. With the rise of hustle culture, both students and parents end up staring down the barrel of rising college acceptance rates and get themselves into endless cycles of comparisons. From an individual perspective, there aren’t choices for most students because the options are either giving up or opting into a rat race that just gets more difficult every year. With a consistent pool of more and more qualified applicants for college, a magnet school like LASA is forced into a potentially hostile culture.
However, as prevalent as hustle culture seems to be at LASA, its effects on the health of students seems to be in a mix. According to the same survey, 56.3% of the Liberator staff answered below a 7 on the question of “how unhealthy is hustle culture?” According to them, hustle culture promotes hard work and efficiency and ultimately makes us useful parts of society. Although many agreed with the original idea that the promotion of hard work is positive, there are some arguments saying that work shouldn’t be the only element in life and how excessive hustle culture can lead to mental issues, isolation and being solely product oriented. According to the financial diet, hustle culture becomes unhealthy when your life revolves around a giant calendar and that busyness becomes an excuse. Being permanently busy doesn’t make someone’s time more important and it does not make them superior either. Being constantly busy shouldn’t be something of pride. Hustle culture in moderate conditions is useful in promoting hard work but when applied excessively, the health affects not only the individual but also those around you.
The prevalence of hustle culture both in American society and at LASA cannot be ignored. It exists and we are all affected by it. We can either restrain the effects of hustle culture or let a system that is designed for unprotected factory workers rule our lives.
