It’s always been about balance. It’s almost as if life is a seesaw. The drudgery of balancing academics, a social life, and sports is a nightmare to high schoolers. We fear the risk of losing ourselves in one aspect or the other and failing to achieve what we’ve always wanted. It’s all a big recipe for stress.

As a junior in high school, this year has definitely taken a toll on my mental health, and I can certainly speak for my classmates too. With the IB curriculum, standardized tests, and maintaining a high GPA, its safe to say this year has led to a couple breakdowns and several all nighters. Frankly, it’s a lot to handle, and there’s not much wiggle room for error.

“Find your passion in high school,” they say. “High school is where you find yourself.” It’s almost as if high schoolers blatantly ignore what we generally hear from teachers because it’s almost impossible to do. With the heavy workload and the intense pressure, it becomes easy to forget that we are more than just our GPA and SAT score.

Ever since I was four I knew I wanted to be a doctor. It was a huge dream I had and I didn’t want to let anything come in my way. But once I entered high school, reality was like a slap in my face. The stress levels and the constant bombardment with tests was difficult to manage, and I questioned whether I’d be able to handle it all through college and medical school.

All these questions led me to do some research on my own. I created an online survey which was answered by 400 high school students across the country. The students were asked questions about their study schedules, hours of sleep, and extremity of stress. I was delighted to receive so many answers and immediately formatted the data into numerous graphs and tables.

What I found was quite interesting, to say the least:

75% of stressed students were in eleventh and twelfth graders, and 40% of these twelfth graders said their stress was extreme.   
64% of stressed students said this was due to college admissions and athletics.
87% of the stressed students claim their school has done little to nothing to help them cope.
81% of students claimed they slept less than eight hours a day.  
 

So it turns out that stress probably starts here. What surprised me the most was the substantial amount of students who claimed that their school has done little to nothing to help alleviate their stress. If high school students aren’t being trained on managing their mental health during their teenage years, how can we expect these students to manage it when they’re in college?

Overall, taking care of mental health is crucial. It’s really important that by the time students start college, they aren’t burned out from the rigor of high school. Wellness seminars, counseling, and incorporating small wellness activities into the school curriculum are several ways that high schools can take action to prepare their students to face an even more rigorous future. It’s important to start now before it’s too late.