11:59 P.M. The Longest Day

By Jodie Morse

More than 19 hours after it began, senior Anne Zager's school day is still going strong. She has been on the move since a 4:45 a.m. cross-country practice. She only just got home from a 2 1/2-hour drama rehearsal at school. Now she's crouched over the kitchen table, learning about cell mitochondria for a fast-approaching test. "I don't think it's physically possible for me to go to bed before midnight," she says.

Every day is a physical--and mental--marathon for students like Anne. With a 4.325 GPA, a lead role in the fall musical, a load of honors courses and spots on the varsity cross-country and soccer teams, Anne is booked solid. She is so strapped for free time that she has to "check her schedule" before penciling in time for her equally overextended friends. This afternoon six of them met for lunch and went thrift-store shopping. But an hour into the outing, people started peeling off for other commitments.

Most of these seniors have a room of their own at school: No. 216. Anne and many of her friends are members of the school's selective Pegasus program, an accelerated English class with about 25 students per grade. To be admitted, candidates send in a portfolio prior to their freshman year; entries range from stamp collections to Boy Scout badges to Anne's video of one of her theater performances. Since theirs is a four-year course of study, the Pegasites, as they are known, often travel in a pack. And you'll more likely find them rehashing the National Honor Society barbecue than last weekend's parties. "It can be a very bright and interesting group," says its co-coordinator Bob Hutcheson. "But it's a group with its own set of problems, like when failure is getting just an 80 on a test."

Pegasite intensity spikes at college-application time. The Zagers' dining room has been turned into a college war room, draped from top to bottom with brochures from schools like Syracuse University and the University of Colorado at Boulder and a poster-size chart drawn by Anne that lists 14 schools broken down into 22 categories such as class size and distance from home. Nearby sits a CD-ROM SAT study aid, Emergency Prep.

Anne's parents are worried she'll burn out before her high school graduation. "Her mind is so strong, I don't think her body can keep up," says her father Ron. This was literally true for fellow Pegasite Amy Cook, who edits the school newspaper, has a 4.08 GPA and works 12 hours a week at a nursing home. By the middle of last year she was developing an ulcer that her doctor attributed to school stress. ("The doctor told us, 'Congratulations, I think you've got a budding college professor on your hands,'" recalls her father.) Now taking medicine for her stomach, Amy has scaled back on some activities and traded in her daily three cups of coffee for tea. Her parents ask that she log four hours a week of relaxation in front of the TV.

Even Anne's whirlwind energy has its limits. She recently quit her job at the Gap. She has never really been on a date. "I just don't have the time," she says. Mostly, though, she just skimps on sleep, surviving on less than six hours most nights.

But the biggest effect of Anne's rapid-fire existence may be felt next fall. "For college," she confides, "I might want someplace a little less difficult."

--By Jodie Morse