Sleep, homework, and stress: three things that affect highschool and college students the most. Unfortunately, sleep,despite being crucial to function as a student and human being, is sacrificed due to things such as homework and stress more and more in the lives of high school students across the country. At the start of each school year, students go from relatively high amounts of sleep and low amounts of homework and stress to minimal sleep and a great deal of homework and stress. This transition is manageable for some students, but for many others, it is common to get overwhelmed. Especially since we are still in a pandemic, the mere thought of school stresses some students out.
Additionally, each student considers different things to be stressful. For some students, not doing their homework in order to get more sleep may be a stress reliever, but for other students, the mere thought of having incomplete assignments is enough to keep them up all night long.
According to Global News Wire, 45 percent of high school students report being stressed “all the time” and 66 percent of high school students often worry about being accepted into their chosen college. These percentages will continue to increase tremendously among seniors with the start of college applications underway. A fear of failure has been embedded into the brains of students.
Questions like “What if I don’t get accepted into my top college?,” “What will I do with my life when I graduate?,” and “How much student debt will I be facing in the next few years?” plague the minds of many high school students. These are legitimate questions that the average high schooler is unfortunately not given the proper resources to handle.
As someone who will be exploring new beginnings in less than a year, I sometimes feel stressed, which affects my sleep patterns and my motivation to do my homework. Different coping mechanisms such as calendar planning, screen time, and meditation may help, but they do not take away from the fact that us high schoolers have numerous obligations. Students who are taking rigorous classes, playing sports, and managing familial responsibilities or a job typically have the most stressful lives, before even starting adulthood. Increased stress and a lack of sleep during the formative teenage years leads to aging, being predisposed for certain diseases, and an increased likelihood of having poor mental health. As motivated to succeed in life as many students such as myself are, we cannot ignore the toll this journey takes on our sanity.