Teenage Stress

Are teens today under to much stress? We have homework, school, jobs, chores, volunteering, clubs, sports and extracurricular. An article came out today in The Globe and Mail about teenagers under massive amounts of stress. The article quotes teenagers who talk about lack of sleep and social life. Some of these teens are in their last year of high school and some are in university. Today teens are under more stress then ever, for some there isn’t a free moment in the day. You know there is a problem when our backpacks are so heavy we are getting back problems at the age of sixteen. Our bodies are designed for being active all day not sitting in a classroom for seven hours then going home and spending another three hours doing homework at a desk. For some who are in grade twelve in science and math programs they do allot more than just three hours. Not to mention if you want to get into a good school all of your extracurricular like school teams, student council, clubs and volunteering. Some kids have no time during the week with everything their involved in and some adults have the misconception that we have fun in all our extracurricular activities. What’s fun about going to class then spending your whole lunch making posters, selling stuff or playing chess when you could be eating doing hw or god forbid spending time with your friends. Emma as you know does this blog with me on top of being a great student, having a demanding job, training for a twenty-three kilometer marathon, our YouTube channel, lot of clubs and much more. I have actually seen the girl running around our school with a cold going from club to club doing work for them. I got to say it’s pretty impressive I mean she deals with my lazy butt every day. We are only fifteen I can't imagine the grade twelve workload. I personally think way to much pressure is on us I mean it makes me laugh when adults say don't be so stressed you don't have to know what you want to do now except for the fact that you have to have a pretty good idea or your screwed if you don't have the right courses. So you decided to drop French but you want to go into politics oops you should have thought that earlier. So you switched to mixed math because you were told all arts programs only needed mixed three math but you find your dream arts course and shocker its not needed but highly recommend you have academic four math. So in other words no matter what adults tell you its best to pile on the work load starting in grade nine to keep your options open summer school recommender. Yes we are under allot of stress, it sucks that we get to work hard for four years only to go to harder school then get a job. My sister is an executive student council member, caption of the cheerleading squad, has a busy social schedule and is taking every science and math. She got pneumonia because she didn't have time to take care of her cold; she was so sick and still couldn’t get a break from her teachers. There are television shows when teens fake sick or pray to be sick to get out of school, how unrealistic if you get sick you deny it to the point of near death to avoid missing school and falling behind only to never catch back up again. The students you see who don't try have merely given up the fight or have fallen pray to stress which can lead to weight gain, drinking, drugs, electronic obsession and god forbid failure.

-D