Students carry the weight of their future on their mind, and are expected to control this without mistakes. Woodbridge High students gave their insight as to what they have to deal with on a day to day basis, and what they do in an attempt to manage their stress.
Before understanding what high school students do in order to cope with anxiety and stress, we must know where this stress is coming from. When asking graduating senior Emma Conde about what makes her stressed she mostly talked about school, which proved to be a common theme among other asked people.
When discussing what aspects of school are stressful, Conde responded with,“ I think anything related to time management, you know? Like when there’s assignments that have a very specific due date. When those build up, you have to figure out how to manage everything, and that gets really stressful.”
Thinking about how many assignments one gets per class, how many classes one takes, and therefore how long one is at school for, it all becomes overwhelming. When asking sophomore and tech theater student, Eros Orantes, about her schedule she explained, “Starting from 8 [am] until *pause* on even days? 3-ish [pm]. And on odd days, 4 [pm]? That’s if it’s like a normal week without tech theater, but, if we’re including tech? It depends on what the schedule is like, but if we’re doing something like tech week, 9-ish [pm]?”
Hearing about her schedule shows that your average student will be at school for around the same amount of time as a 9 am -5pm job, on a good day. On a bad day, in terms of time, this can be stretched into a 13 hour school day.
After getting a good look into why students may be nervous when it comes to school, we can begin to see the connection between overexerting yourself mentally, and the habits students have when it comes to relaxation.
Orantes made this pattern clear when she claimed to be, “a chronic doom scroller.”
When further asked about why she does this, Orantes talked about a need to turn her brain off after a long day of taxing work. Something similar was said when questioning ASB Human Relations Commissioner, Enerel Bilegdemberel.
In order to relax Enerel likes to be social, but Bilegdemberel spoke about feeling as though he doesn’t have enough time to relax. Even when plainly asked about what he likes to do to wind down, he relates it to the stresses of school when he says, “I haven’t been able to hang out with a lot of friends because of basketball season and, like, I’m in ASB. I also play video games but not that much because of school.”
Everyone knows that life can feel like a lot, but talking to the people around us helps us to know that we are not alone in our struggles. We all have issues we have to face, and we all try our best. Don’t beat yourself up if you feel like you need to take a break, or just calm down for a little bit after a hard day. Being alive is hard, so remember to not push yourself past your limits, and always do what makes you happy.
