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Responsibilities & Pressure

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“High school is the best time of your life. Relax and enjoy it! Oh, by the way, only taking 3 AP courses this year? What do you mean you are not going out for varsity? You don’t have a date for the prom? What do you mean you’re cutting your hours at work! Hey, 3 A’s, 2 B’s and a C! What the heck is wrong with you this semester?”
Got the point yet? High school can be a time of great joy and it can also be filled with stress. A lot depends on you and your attitude towards these four years. High school is often the first time that you will have to balance your time between school work, a job or community service, dating and perhaps a sport or other extracurricular activity.
Learning how to manage your time is essential for surviving all these possibilities. How much is too much, academically, socially, or in terms of extracurricular activities? Knowing when and how to ask for help and learning when to say “I would love to get more involved but I have too much on my plate already,” are important skills for you to develop. High school is a time when you will have to deal with stress; how you deal can make all the difference.

So I’m failing English. I’m never gonna go to England.
—Homer Simpson

I can’t believe it. My counselor told me that I can leave school right after lunch. Our school has this cool thing they call an apprenticeship. I really think I want to be a veterinarian and, well, they are going to hook me up. From 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. I work in a vet’s office. I get to leave this sucky school early and I earn credit for the hours I spend at the vet’s. Now I get to see what a veterinarian really does, not just read some stuff in a 20-year-old book about becoming one.
—Ricky, 17

Not knowing what the final result of all of my hard work would be was a constant stressor for me. I didn’t know if I would get into the colleges I wanted to, and I certainly didn’t find high school helping me to figure out what would happen after college.
Finding a social niche was also stressful. I didn’t know many people at my high school when I started there, and I felt like everyone else had already cliqued off by the second day of ninth grade. I worried a lot about whether the peers I was spending time with were true friends, or just other people who didn’t have a niche.
—Philissa, 19

I don’t know what I’m good at. I know it’s not school. I’m busy taking care of my step dad’s house. He’s in jail, so I had to fix the roof and the electrical. Then I have to go over to help take care of my grandpa. He’s got cancer and my mom has to work. I don’t want him to die. He’s one of the only people in my life who ever really cared about me. I do stuff at his house, too. All kinds of stuff I have to fix over there. The door’s broke and there’s something wrong with the plumbing. Then my teachers act like their assignments are the only things I have to do or think about. I’ve got so much other stuff going on, I can’t concentrate on school. They hassle me and then I lose it and get another detention for acting out. I’m failing everything. I get sent to these alternative programs and everybody thinks I’m so stupid.
—Alex, 16

We don’t have time to relax when we get home. We go right to work then get up and do it all over again.*

Every year we had this enormous research paper to do in English. It pretty much took the entire year to do. Everybody hated it, but I have to tell you, I really learned a lot about organizing information, supporting an argument, and expressing myself, skills that helped me all through college and afterwards, too.
—Karen

All I do is work and go to school. I need two jobs to support myself.*

The stutter mainly affected me in my English classes. I feared public speaking more than anything. I feared walking into class everyday, unless I was positive we were not working on reading a play out loud, or doing oral presentations. I literally would sweat in my seat, praying I was never called on to read a part in a play or read a short passage from a story. The only year I actually talked to my teacher about my stutter was my senior year. (I regret attempting to just hide the problem in my sophomore and junior year). English classes were painful indeed, too painful to describe in words. At times, I felt just dying was better than going to English class. My strict morals did not allow me to skip classes (something I got over in college!) so I just forced myself. I would have headaches everyday after school just because of English class and the fear of speaking in front of a class.
—Paul, 19

There was the time I actually did well in an in-class presentation in English because they don’t like people being logical, and I hadn’t slept in a couple days, so I just rambled nonsense, and they loved it.
—Josh, 20

Throughout my high school experience, I have been a very involved student.
When I started secondary school, I realized that my school district had many extra curricular activities available, like sports and clubs. I also go to school in a very diverse area so there are many opportunities to volunteer, fundraise and participate in community projects. When I first started junior high school, my mom told me that I could get involved in anything I wanted to as long as I could keep up with my school work. I chose rowing. I had tried the rowing machines and found out that I liked it and that I was good at it. That experience made me realize that I wanted to try new things. I liked feeling good about what I could do and wanted to learn to do better.
I wanted to take advantage of as much as I could because my school had so much to offer. I used my beginning rowing skills to go onto the crew team and realized how much fun working as a team was. I went on to become very involved in many sports. I joined the ski club and learned how to ski. I had been on a community swim team when I was younger, so I eventually went on the varsity swim team. I started doing one varsity sport a year, then two, and eventually participated in three varsity sports a year. I was on the swim team in fall, the ski team in winter, and the crew team in spring. When I graduate, I will have earned nine varsity letters.
It is not just the value of hard work that I have learned. Being involved in extracurricular activities has been a big help to keep me on schedule and organize my schoolwork. Knowing that I have so many hours of practice or meets, I have to do homework and complete assignments whenever I have the time. I can’t put off schoolwork until later because I may have to go to practice and will be too tired to do it after. If I have a lot of homework, I will have to do some before and some after practice. I also have learned to prioritize and become really good at time management.
I always have work with me and take advantage of any time I have to keep working on assignments. Sitting waiting in a restaurant, in a doctor’s office, etc. are good times to get some work done. I am also very careful to try to do something right the first time because I may not have the time to try to do it over. I always have schedules to follow and that makes me stay more organized and productive.
By being so involved, I always had some place to be and I always had a schedule to follow. It kept me focused and on track. These activities have a big social benefit too. They always kept me feeling like I was a part of something, a group or a team. It gives you the feeling of belonging and it is great to have friends involved in activities with you. It really makes you feel good.
—Caitlin, 17

Things like being cool and being accepted by the cool kids caused a lot of stress for me. Also, things like the fact that electives don’t count enough, that I have to take classes in things that don’t interest me, parents’ restrictions, being cooler and moving up in your peer group, or when I don’t like the teacher but need the class. Situations that I feel I have no control and not enough choices also cause a lot of stress.
—Danielle, 22

When I was playing volleyball and basketball, my grades were actually higher because I was forced to schedule my time wisely.
—Sarah, 23

I was forced to attend a special school for math and science. It only increased the work load, and kept me in school for a couple hours longer, which gave me even less time to do the work.
—Josh, 20

My parents were right when they said high school would be something you need to work hard at to be successful and want for yourself. At 14, you don’t always realize how important getting good grades are until it’s senior year and college is staring you right in the face.
—Ashley, 19

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
–George Patton

Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.
—Norman Augustine

There is way too much pressure in class. In order for someone to play a sport and excel academically, they can only get about five hours of sleep a night.
—James

Most of my classes . . . I just don’t care; I’ll just sit through them and not listen to a single thing anyone says. Because of this I have a low GPA and my mom is really unhappy about it. I know it’s just because she cares, but I hate how every time I’m around her she brings school up. And that’s the last thing I ever want to talk about. So, yea, mostly high school sucks. I can’t wait until next year when I’m finally done with it.
—Sammi, 17

There is support for the resource kids, the ones who are having a hard time in school. There’s support for the smart kids, who have lots of opportunities. How about some help for kids in the middle?*

*indicates material that was submitted anonymously

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