A letter to high school students

If you’re currently a high school student you might understand what I’m about to say. Stress is taking over our lives. A few days ago I read something that a girl wrote online, and I couldn’t relate more. She said she saw a tweet that said: “Why do people have to ACT this way?” This is the impact school has on us students. It has influenced every part of our lives, even social media.

SBAC, AP testing, ACT, SAT, and finals. The hardest exams during our high school career, all happening within the same month. Not to mention that many of us also have jobs, homework, and other responsibilities.

Adults say the only thing we need is good time management. This is indeed very important, but certainly not enough to handle everything we have on our plates.

An average student’s schedule may go like this: school till 3:30 p.m., at least two hours of homework, another two to five hours of extracuriculars and/or a job; also, because we are teenagers and our social lives are crucial, we invest at least an hour on social media. After all this, we still have to eat, shower, spend time with our family, etc.

Exams like the ones mentioned above require a lot of study hours, more than we can afford. It feels like our days don’t have enough hours. After generations of students, no one has ever found a solution to this problem, except for one: less sleep. Some might debate about whether this is actually a solution, since it may give you some extra hours to study but generates a whole new problem: extreme fatigue throughout the day.

Being a student might seem easy if we compare it to adulthood, but we must keep in mind how challenges increase their difficulty level as we grow older. We shouldn’t minimize our problems just because there might be someone going through something worse. Each one of us have different things to deal with, but school is something we all go through together.

Some might hate school, and others might love it. Personally, I enjoy coming to school and sometimes even enjoy waking up super early for zero period, or staying up all night studying for a math test. However, it’s really not worth it to waste our teenage years drowning in homework and stress. High school is a once in a lifetime experience. Four years full with opportunities and experiences we’ll never forget; we should enjoy and make the most out of them.