Traverse City Record-Eagle

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November 2, 2010

High-schoolers have a lot to deal with

Homework, grades, college are at top of the list

By Amy Sevenski Special to the Record-Eagle

Do your homework, clean your room, get a job, do well on ACT, get good grades ... As students in high school, we hear all those and more almost every day it seems. Parents, teachers and family members are constantly reminding us how important doing well on standardized tests, being a top student, going to college and "succeeding in life" is.

However, most people who are pushing us don't really know how stressful a student's life can be. Of course, most adults say that high-schoolers are too young to understand what stress is, but they are wrong.

Most students have about seven classes each, which will usually have homework every time. In addition to homework, most students also have a job or play a sport and often take part in both of those.

Not to mention all the stresses that can be present at home; there can often seem like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done.

If you're in sports, you can end up getting home anywhere between 5:30 and 7 p.m., and that's only if it's a practice and not a game or meet.

When you do get home, you are tired and hungry and just want to take a shower and go to bed.

Unfortunately, it's time to get started on homework, which can take a couple of hours if you stay focused, but even that can be hard with all the distractions of the Internet, TV and cell phone.

Then, by the time you do get to bed, it's super late and it only makes the next day harder because you're so tired.

Not only do we have to worry about the stresses that are currently happening, but also about the ones that are in the close future.

Things like, what college do I want to go to, or what college can I even get into.

To make things even harder, a decision has to be made on the career you're going to do for the rest of your life.

Just thinking about that is enough to make you not want to get out of bed in the morning.

All in all, things are a lot tougher and a lot more full of stress than what most people may think for high school students.

And this is just a little insight to what it's like to be in our shoes and this doesn't even begin to show all of the obstacles that we high-schoolers face.

Amy Sevenski is a senior at Kingsley High School.

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