Senior Stress Levels by Marc Otero
Description: At a young age, balancing school, work, extracurriculars, and sports with each other results in stress, a lot of it. Read more from a High School Journalism Student's Perspective in this article by Marc Otero...
Senior Stress Levels
By Marc Otero
You’re a senior in high school, you start your day at 6:30 am, shower, brush your teeth, pick out what to wear, and you’re off to school. You walk into school, start your assignments, and switch classes every hour. By the end of the day, homework assignments are filled and you’re trying to complete them. Your alarm rings, you have to get ready to go to work or practice, or maybe you have a game. You spend the rest of the day doing that, and when you get home it’s time to sleep; but not yet, you forgot your homework. You stay awake for hours completing the homework assigned to you earlier and fall asleep and just like that your 6:30 am alarm rings.
This is the reality of high school students with responsibilities like having a part-time job and participating in sports and extracurricular activities. Based on a survey I conducted, 82% of seniors’ responses were that their stress levels are at or higher than an 8 out of 10. When asked why, here were the responses. “[Stress] makes me tired and unmotivated to do anything;” “stress impacts your life by just reminding you of how much you have going on. To me, stress comes from school, extracurriculars, and what I need to get done outside of school. Being stressed lets me lose motivation easily and makes me not want to do anything.” 70% of these students are most stressed from work. 70% of students have jobs, and with jobs come responsibility, integrity, and effort.
Dealing with so many responsibilities is stressful for students. At a young age, balancing school, work, extracurriculars, and sports with each other results in stress, a lot of it. 60% of students agree that stress has negatively impacted their lives.
I asked several students (Aaliyah Aguilar, Jadelyn Mendoza, Ashley Torrez, and Trinity Vasquez) about their stress levels and how they could better handle them. When asked what the most stressful part of their daily lives are, Ashley, Aaliyah, and Jadelyn said work, and Trinity said her classes made her the most stressed.
In addition, 75% of students surveyed are experiencing “senioritis” which is a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance. This could be due to several stressors such as applying to colleges, managing social life, managing schoolwork, paying for future education, and scholarships, saying goodbye to family, entering the workforce, and adulting.
The overwhelming majority response to dealing with stress was to sleep or listen to music. Some ways other students have managed to find ways to relieve stress are taking naps, relaxing, reading, listening to music, making a meal, or keeping themselves busy.
Are there better ways to handle stress? Downloading stress relief apps, meditating, drinking herbal tea, and consulting with a medical professional are some other ways to relieve stress that may be effective.
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