Are Students Given Too Much to Do?
Being a student is hard in its own ways. You’re young, and yet you’re given a lot of errands to run. You have lots of responsibilities to take care of, such as your siblings, your own workload of multiple assignments and projects and even sometimes, your family. This is not counting all the time you have wasted from school, after-school activities and when all these ‘to-dos’ stack up, the situation doesn’t leave a lot of time left to yourself. Many students around the globe are being diagnosed with depression, stress and sleep deprivation due to too much stress of things to do and not being able to seek help (Teen Depression).
What does this mean? Are students given too much to do? Or are students just lazy and procrastinating and complaining? Students, young or old, are complaining about homework and grades and chores every day. Many adults bicker that children nowadays are just lazy and “don’t understand the struggle”. However, this is what the adults believe. Do they have proof of this? Student’s pleas are not being answered, and this gets so extreme that even the students themselves are scared about revealing the scars that are caused from the words, “Stop complaining, that’s not even that much to do!” Or even worse, “Just suck it up!” However, young adults who used to be students in high school are starting to speak out about this issue, since the issue is so common and is getting worse. Faith-Ann Bishop, 20, recounted her first time cutting herself in eighth grade due to all the pressures she was fighting in school, saying “‘It makes the world very quiet for a few seconds. For a while I didn’t want to stop, because it was my only coping mechanism.
I hadn’t learned any other way'” (Schrobsdorff). If her only coping mechanism resulted to cutting herself, imagine the risks for many other students like her, or students who are even worse off. Faith-Ann, now a film student in the Los Angeles, has stated that back in high school she was constantly fighting about grades, relationships, her future, her family, and a lot more. She described it as if she was “‘[climbing] Mount Everest in high heels'” every day (Schrobsdorff). According to an article on Time Health “What’s Causing Depression And Anxiety In Teens?”, being a teenager, there are a lot of tasks to do and complete (Schrobsdorff). Another former student, Hannah O’Brien, has witnessed so many other fellow classmates break down ‘mentally and physically in tests’.
If that was not enough for the students, these very students who she knew have been known to wake up many nights in a row to keep up with the school work (Kam). Hannah O’Brien makes a statement about school work, saying, “I personally have seen so many of my closest friends absolutely break — emotionally, physically, mentally — under stress, and I knew a lot of it was coming from school work” (Kam). This generation is not just cursed by the heavy amounts of schoolwork that affect the high school students. Younger students have a lot to worry about academically too. At a very young age, not even reaching double digits, school counselors describe situations that are extreme for their age.
Joy Holt, a school counselor in Arkansas, said that some students even have “actually thrown up on their test booklets” (Kam). The “job” of being a student nowadays is daunting and can be described as managing school work, managing social media identity, worrying about your tests, your future career path, and other issues that make the “job” as daunting to the student as possible (Schrobsdorff). Some adults can still complain from this, stunningly. With statements such as “It may be that bad, but it can’t be worse than being an adult at work! What do kids know about stress?” Well, for those who might think this, it is said that sadly, the students may even experience higher levels of stress than adults (Thurmond)! The environment for the students in this era is said by Schrobsdorff that They are the post-9/11 generation, raised in an era of economic and national insecurity. They’ve never known a time when terrorism and school shootings weren’t the norm. They grew up watching their parents weather a severe recession, and, perhaps most important, they hit puberty at a time when technology and social media were transforming society.
(Schrobsdorff) How can this issue be so scary? Well, if you are depending on the students right now who will be the future generation of the world, you have to keep them safe and healthy at least so they can live on to populate the future generation. However, the ‘safe and healthy’ part is being ignored by many adults. With teen depression, potential health issues can be from small health issues like effects from use of alcohol and drugs to more serious issues like suicidal thoughts/attempts, family and relationship difficulties and suicide . At the alarmingly increasing rate of this issue, the future generation can be overrun by problems such as drug abuse, mental problems, and illnesses from the constant consumption of illicit drugs and alcohol such as cancer, obesity, liver complications, etc…(Teen Depression). How is the future generation going to keep up the human race if most of the world seems to be plagued by the symptoms mentioned? Students in the current era have been plagued with anxiety, depression, and stress, and are unwilling to speak up about the issue.
How is the future generation going to improve and develop a better world without these students being healthy and alive for the future? Schools should start working now on reviewing the amounts of schoolwork to be assigned and also starting to be aware of students’ symptoms of depression or anxiety. Parents, or any adults really, can also take part in helping these children by seeking out signs of depression. However, these students may be running out of time. Act now. Or there will be no future generation.
