Christina Zhang, 16, averages a couple hours of free time a day, but it's hard to convince herself that she can actually use them to relax. "The whole time you're thinking about, 'Oh, what if other people are working right now, and they are getting ahead?'" she says. After taking eight AP classes as a sophomore and completing a college-like application process, Zhang started her third year of high school at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, a residential public school for "talented" juniors and seniors. When she calls her grandparents, she worries she should be studying instead. Not wanting to squander good brain hours on the task, she does her laundry after midnight.
Zhang, whose mother asked that she use a pseudonym for safety and privacy purposes, is part of a new generation of high-achievers. Six students in similar situations were profiled by filmmaker Debbie Lum in "Try Harder!" a documentary about the extreme anxieties of high-achieving, college-bound teenagers premiering on PBS on May 2.
