Students are pressured by their peers and teachers to strive for excellence, but does this mean that we have to completely go out of our way to accomplish these things, including in ways that could potentially be dangerous to the hardworking student?

For me personally I have at least one test per week to study for and have no time to do outside of school activities, let alone complete the tasks of a normal routine. Yes I do understand that the students are getting prepared to become college students, but does this mean right after middle school, the new 9th graders are taken from 1-100% within the first quarter? They have actually settled in highschool and accepted that they are now in a different atmosphere and environment.

The different grades should have different expectations, there should  be a level of completion to the next instead of one big drop set onto our shoulders. I know that the students need to realize how much we need to achieve in the four years. We have to learn as much as we can before we are off on our own, but we can change the way that we complete this goal.

Getting all of the required high school credits is difficult when the student doesn’t even know why we need to learn a specific subject when we may never use it in life. For the students that know or even have an idea of what they want to do when they grow up, they should just meet their own requirements even if that means there’s a specific amount of credits we need to get this. It would be beneficial if there weren’t any required classes, but we could choose the classes we think we would need for the specific career or college that we want to encounter.

As a typical high school student I spend about 3-5 hours a night doing homework for all of my classes, even when my teachers all tell me that they “never give homework”. They also say that if they ever do it, it will only take up to “10 minutes”, which is a lie, but in some cases true when I need to get a signature on a sheet from my parent or legal guardian.

According to New York University, “The study shows that there is growing awareness many subgroups of youth experience high levels of chronic stress, to the extent it impedes their abilities to succeed academically, compromises their mental health functioning, and fosters risk behavior. Furthermore, this chronic stress appears to persist into the college years, and researchers warns it may contribute to academic disengagement and mental health problems among emerging adults.” To me, this means that these students are being pushed not only by their teachers, parents but also themselves. This can be good, but can also lead to some unhealthy disadvantages.

Denise Pope a Stanford researcher, said “students who receive too much homework (more than two hours per night) report negative impacts such as high levels of stress, health problems, and a lack of balance (as in work-life or school-life balance…not unable-to-walk-in-a-straight-line balance). Come to think of it, sometimes grown-ups complain about balance, too. Maybe the struggle shouldn’t have to start so early”. If students are being stressed out about school work then this may lead to an unhealthy problem.

When I am stressed about a test or a homework assignment I can’t sleep until I know that its completed to the best of my ability, even if this means I don’t get sleep. Sometimes it goes on for days and weeks, without getting any sleep. Also, for me, having sports and personal, outside of school things happening is a lot to fit into one schedule.  I have experienced falling asleep in class and stumbling over a lot because I’m so tired. I get so worried that I am going to fail the subject that I go through this discomfort, and because of my lack of sleep and focusness, I don’t get all of my hard work put into what I wanted to do.

Stress can lead to serious measures that can be very difficult to overcome. This can come to low energy, headaches, upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea. This can go as far as aches, pains, and tense muscles, chest pain and rapid heartbeat, insomnia, frequent colds and infections. There is more symptoms of stress that are more harmful than this, but this is what you will start with when you continue to be stressed.

Overall school needs to provide less homework for students, not just because they want less homework to but to ensure the health of the their students.