Committing Suicide for the Sake of an A

As I laid on the ground, with my body contorted from my leap into death, the light from my eyes started to dim as I breathed my last breath. Well, that is, until I was told to get up again. After re-creating a suicide from the railings I got up and dusted myself off, as my group finished the last of the re-creations. As we were walking I thought to myself how humorous it was that I "committed suicide" (twice!) for the sake of an A. However that soon changed as I realized something. I realized that there are students who have done that.. who have committed suicide, not for the sake of an A, mind you, but because they couldn't get that A.
Suicide has been a big issue fairly recently with it's ties with gay bullying and harassment, especially after what happened to Tyler Clementi the Rutger's freshman who jumped off the George Washington bridge. However before that I remembered as a senior in high school how in discussing the various colleges, suicide was a topic brought up. It became hard to ignore it when news broke of the Cornell students who jumped to their death and the fences subsequently put up to prevent anymore possible jumpers. It was also hard to ignore the death of Cameron Dabaghi, the junior from Yale who ended his life by jumping off the Empire State Building.
With each of these suicides I recalled how it made me worried about college, however it only lasted for a little bit as I realized I would be fine. Now after a year of being in college I've noticed how easy it is to become stressed out, especially in trying to get and/or maintain a 4.0 GPA. Not only that but, the idea of chasing after perfection, the pressure that one can get only multiplies when you're the first in the family to ever go to college, or the one the family designates as the savior and the one that cannot screw up or you'll be disowned. With that kind of pressure one can see why suicide may seem like a viable option.
However, with all that being said suicide is really only a permanent solution to a temporary problem. To be honest one shouldn’t have to kill oneself for not being able to have perfection, I mean it’s unattainable and really, who in the world is perfect? Also one needs to remember that there are a lot of people who have gone to do great things, brilliant people really, and you know what? A bunch of them are college dropouts or in some rare cases never went to college at all. If that is so then why should students be killing themselves over a course like, I don’t know underwater basket weaving (?), when they don’t need it?
The idea of failure, it’s what leads to some students committing suicide, because they’re “failures”. Well, if you feel that you are a failure then own it! Admit it, and then learn from it. We learn from our mistakes and from the ashes we’ll rise and be reborn as a phoenix. Anyway suicide, as tragic as it may be, we have to carry on to tomorrow and do everything to the best of our ability, even if it means that we cannot attain that A. All anyone can do is do their best and if that means that your best is a B-, then what more can anyone ask for? Don’t strive for something for the sake of pleasing someone else, do it because you want to. After all why commit suicide for the sake of an A when you have so much more you can achieve that has more meaning than an A will ever have?