Stress on the high school student

Stress+on+the+high+school+student

Olivia Doro

Midway through the second semester of my sophomore year I had an absolute breakdown. I lied and told my parents I was sick just to stay home one day to catch my breath. Overwhelmed from the pressures of school and the new added pressures of my life, I broke. The stress of getting nothing below an A, being a good daughter, writing and covering every event given to me for the school paper, volunteering, and being the most positive person I could be became too much.

Currently a junior, I’ve learned how to better manage my stress by better managing what I put my energy, time, and support into. Although, the year has been difficult already for most of the junior class at Fossil Ridge High School: the upcoming winter finals, SAT and ACT tests, the looming choices for college and our futures, and finally the constant pressures of our personal lives. This is also the hardest academic year we will face in high school; more homework and higher expectations have taken their toll.

Homework has become overwhelming, with barely any time left for leisure activities and sometimes even eating. I’m not the only high school student with a high homework load – high school students have an amount of work assigned to be done out of class that averages three and a half hours per day according to a survey done by the Los Angeles Times. With 6 out of 10 students involved in at least one extracurricular activity, that’s an extra 1-3 hours after school where students are committing their time to something, then going home to an additional three hours of homework.

Looking only at homework and extracurriculars, they average five and a half hours after school, and Fossil releases students at 2:50 P.M. This means that if a Fossil student does nothing but their after school activities and homework, with no breaks in between, they get done with everything at 8:20 P.M. But that time doesn’t include dinner, showering, the travel time to get home, working (if the student has a job), and chores. Add in that extra time and what time does a student finally get to bed?

The circles under my eyes and the eyes of my peers are due to the lack of sleep teenagers are experiencing. Teenagers in the United States are getting 6.9 hours of sleep a night, according to the 2011 sleep poll done by the National Sleep Foundation. And 7% of all teens get less than six hours of sleep every night, whereas the recommended amount of sleep per night is eight to ten hours for people aged 14-17.

Currently there are numerous studies on how a lack of sleep and sleep deprivation are negatively affecting academic performance. Adequate amounts of sleep benefit learning and memorization, as well as critical thinking, for all people. A research paper from the University of California, Long Beach found “that people who slept 9 hours or more in a 24-hour period had significantly higher GPA’s than short sleepers who sleep 6 hours or less in a 24-hour period. These short sleepers also tended to show signs of anxiousness, were less creative, more neurotic, and more prone to hallucinate as well.” Are those things the high school students should be experiencing? Sleep is what students crave most and yet choose to prioritize the lowest to keep up with academics and not fall behind in school work.

We experience more stress than adults, according to a study done by the American Psychological Association, and we have accepted that right now society will do nothing to change it. Teenagers shouldn’t be experiencing these things and added stressors at such young ages. Society has acknowledged and accepted these facts, giving recommendations on how to aid and stop them, rather than actually stopping them.

After reading these statistics and knowing these facts it’s the job of students, faculty, and family to adjust the curriculum, time management, and expectations on the high school student. As a society we’ve taken the first step in acknowledging and researching these factors. Now it is the time to take action and change them. Let’s improve the level of stress students are facing and change it so that no child will ever experience the truly awful feeling of believing that this is how life should be.