May the Schools Have Mercy
Has schoolwork ever stressed you out so much you can't even deal with it anymore? Have you ever spent countless hours looking up memes to find ways to procrastinate because you don't even want to begin to think about how much homework you have? Some people, like Maranda, experience stress every single day due to school. But how bad is this stress affecting students like her?
Maranda, in just one year, has had more than six breakdowns. “I literally collapsed on the floor and I was bawling, and I felt so stupid because I didn’t get it.” She’s gotten sick seven times in just the first part of 2017’s second school semester. Five times she’s rushed to the bathroom just to throw up. She’s cried more than half a dozen times on her bedroom floor. But what is causing such detrimental effects on Maranda’s health?
Just like more than fifty percent of of high schoolers, Maranda is suffering from the consequences of stress and anxiety caused by school and homework. Many adults don’t seem to notice that when teens use the expression “I am so dead today” or, “I am falling into crippling depression”, it isn’t meant to be funny anymore. Stress, anxiety, and sleep depravation is physically devastating high school students.
The pressure to keep high grades, trying to keep up with all the classes, cramming in all the activities required by school and the rest of the world, and mainly, staying up late to do homework, is taking a severe toll on teenagers’ health. Maranda, along with many others, including myself and most of our classmates- is not exaggerating, contrary to what many people think.
Maranda struggles to keep everything under control without letting another wave of anxiety and stress seize her. “Sometimes I have 20 things to do, sometimes it’s 5. But either way, I spend more than 5 hours a day hours doing my homework, and even when there’s not a lot to do, the minimum amount of time I spend on homework is always 3 hours of work in a day.” This, of course, leads to sleep depravation. “I normally sleep five hours a day”, she says, “and even over the weekend I still have homework.” But Maranda isn’t the only one sleeping five hours a night. As the Huffington Post stated in a recent article, “over 90 percent of American high school students are chronically sleep-deprived.” Teenagers in high school need to sleep for about 9 hours a night, but what do the facts show us? The same 2014 survey stated that only 9 percent of teens actually sleep that much! Along with Maranda, myself, and our friends, more than twenty percent of the overall teenage population is getting less than five hours of sleep per night.
But even through sleep depravation, Maranda is taking IB advanced and intensive courses, volunteers more than 6 hours a week at the Fort Collins Cat Shelter, and takes part in sports such as tennis. She has so many things going on, but yet she keeps pushing to do more. Why? The fear of failure, trying to impress your family, feel confident about yourself, and more than anything, the pressure to get into a good college is forcing Maranda to accept irrational amounts of work that are deteriorating her health. So many things to do with so little time to accomplish them is stressing her out. As npr published, “Since 2013 teenagers have reported stress levels that exceed those of adults.” And yet, teachers and parents fail to see the damage that is affecting their students and children.
“Teachers are not informed about how much homework they leave, unless you tell them, but they reply with ‘manage your time better or talk to your other teacher’”, Maranda explains, “I’ve even had four tests in one day, and it wasn’t finals week or anything. When you have that many tests in the same week and same day, and you have to go home and study for four different tests, your brain is not going to function. But teachers and counselors just tell you ‘oh yeah, if that’s happening then you need to go talk to your teachers’, but the teachers are not willing to change their test date.” It’s not just the teachers that don’t notice the amount of work, but different programs and classes need to realize that homework is not always vital in learning, especially if a lot of it is busywork. “I don’t think homework should be removed, because it offers practice, but it shouldn’t shame you when you don’t do it, and they should limit the amount of homework they’re allowed to give.”
Teachers aren’t the only ones failing to realize the stress in teenagers. Many parents encourage or force their children to take Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs, even college level classes. Because of this, many students feel the pressure to complete too many rigorous courses to avoid disappointing their parents.
So much of this stress that adults fail to notice, is actually damaging teenagers. Maranda’s stress level on a daily basis is a nine on a scale of one to ten, and the consequences of these levels of stress are scary enough. First of all, there’s the negative reaction to school. We all feel lazy and unwilling to get out of a warm bed when our alarm clock rings in the morning, but for some, the sound of the alarm clock can cause an incomparable panic. Panic to have to go to school, receive more homework, become ashamed of incomplete assignments, and not wanting to face a low grade. Ditching classes to get other classes work done is not the form of balance students need. On the other hand, stress, anxiety and sleep deprivation leads to more severe health issues such as depression, self harm and suicidal thoughts, aggressive behavior, emotional exhaustion, dangerous coping habits such as consuming illegal substances, less exercise, worse eating habits, and, like Maranda, it can lead to a depleting immune system that is causing her to constantly get sick with the flu, or a cough. Headaches, stomachaches, and the inability to process thoughts and memories are also dangerous consequences on the never-ending list of damaging effects on teens caused by school. And “the counselors don’t really do anything about it”, Maranda says, “they’ll lock you out of their office if they don’t want to see you.”
So what can we do to stop the plague of stress that is becoming more and more prominent in high school? “School, first off, should start at a later time, and have a longer lunch break, because some people don’t even have time to eat lunch, and a lot of the kids at our high school don’t have money to go home and eat”, says Maranda. “Instead of sitting during class we need activities. I know teachers sometimes do ‘brain breaks’, but that’s just not enough; like sitting in a classroom and getting lectured for an hour and 20 min and then having homework just doesn’t work.” Classes can also reduce the amount of homework they leave in a day, or even in a week. If a teacher is efficient in the classroom, then why is there the need to re-explain what was learned in that class by leaving a two-hour-long busywork assignment? Creating a sleep schedule is also a way to decrease stress and lack of sleep, but sometimes those just don’t work. Schools need to leave less work that may stress teens out, or consider what other homework classes are leaving before giving out such stressful time-consuming assignments. Maranda, myself, and many, many others, are begging for mercy. High school is supposed to include the best years of your life, but with the amount of stress most of us have, that is a complete lie. If we reduce stress at school and the amount of work that has to be done, then maybe, just maybe, teenagers can actually have a life.