If you are in high school, you can understand the difficulty of having to balance your schoolwork, sports, social life, clubs, work, etc. Being a high school student is full of unbelievable rigor. Having a disciplined and reliable schedule comes a long way during this period of your life. Having to listen to parents and adults not believing the considerable amount of stress that is put on your shoulders each day as a student can also causes a lot of frustration. High school students must balance their lives, but tips on how not to lose your mind as you become a young adult might be useful! 

It’s a Monday night and you have just finished your physics worksheet. After that, you finally stopped studying for your US History exam. You look at the clock and realize you have just spent two hours on homework and it is now 1:00 in the morning. Five hours of rest pass next,  and you only have about 20 minutes to get ready in the morning. Next, an hour of an intense morning football workout leaves your body drenched in sweat and your muscles aching in pain. After a quick shower you head into your AP Stats class. Your teacher begins to hand out a packet of work which is due by the end of class. After enduring the work, you have Honors Physics, AP Government and an exam in US History at the end of the day. Hoping you didn’t just bomb your exam last period, you take out your notebook for your mandatory student council meeting after-school. Your arm is trembling after writing down all that had been said during the meeting. Sprinting into the locker-room before it closes, you get your pads and helmet on and get ready for a grueling two and a half hours of football practice. Finally after running 5 suicides at the end of practice, you change straight into your khaki pants and red shirt. Next is another five hour shift at Target before you get home and begin studying for your Physics quiz for the upcoming day. Can you imagine having to live through this type of day 5-7 times a week? Many high school students could relate to this kind of lifestyle. They hope that the more they can accomplish during this time of life,  the better their living situation will be in the future. 

According to “The Life of High School Students” written by Jessica Bethesda, a lot of teenagers today spend about seven or more hours in school, only to spend more hours in exhausting after-school activities. She also compares high school students’ lives to the factory workers’ during the industrial revolution. Research shows that adolescents going through puberty need 8-9 hours of sleep, but as a result of an exhausting schedule teenagers manage only 6 hours of sleep a night. Teenagers are sleep-deprived and parents are wondering why their children are doing so poorly on their tests. Most parents believe their children sit in school, lazily at their desks,  ignoring their teacher’s lectures, while they sit on their phone. But a lot of students are trying to improve their academics and keep up with the norms of every other student. Most students don’t have the time to lie around and watch television for an hour. 

High school should be the time where we begin to mature and recognize our own interests, our passions and everything else we need to know about ourselves. Furthermore, students encounter pressure from all quarters. They are reminded over and over again that if they do not get to college, that they will amount to nothing in life. Not only that but the expectations that parents, teachers and friends have for the students make the situation worse.

If you learn to balance all of your responsibilities you will be fine in high school. I recommend doing what your schedule allows you to do while also giving yourself some time to relax and indulge in fun activities. You are excited that high school is over until reality hits you and you have to spend more time at college.