From Middle schoolers to college students there is one thing that they have in common about their school lives, the crushing feeling of stress from school. Academic stress is a much larger problem than most people, mainly adults, believe and choose to ignore. Due to this, many students don’t feel safe, or that their stress is invalid. Many tend to invalidate themselves by believing that people are dealing with worse. This can lead to them trying to find different and unhealthy ways to cope with this feeling, unfortunately. This can continue into more dangerous situations, such as addiction or worse.
Freshman student Soren Chalmers said that he knows of people that use self harm and substances to cope with stress and expectations and would rate his average stress levels stay between a 6-7 out of ten.
While there are resources that dedicate their time to help students with this consuming feeling, students have been taught not to trust adults such as counselors. Most students have experienced a sense of betrayal from adults that they trusted causing them to close themselves off from seeking help.
Despite their attempts, This feeling can only worsen when other stressful things are thrown into the mix, such as friends, clubs, sports, and many other things. ScienceDirect stresses that academic stress can interfere with a student’s motivation and ability to work to their best potential.
ScienceDirect also writes that stress can have a large effect on one’s physical health and can cause symptoms like headaches, lack of sleep, stomach aches, a loss of appetite, and a decrease in concentration. The physical and mental effects that come with the overwhelming stress can be almost unbearable, both only adding more stress on top of everything else.
PMC addresses that most commonly this leads to suicide or attempts of suicide, another way that students may try to cope with the stress is by acting out. PMC also tells us that students can see that curtain critiques that are given can lead to heightening the student’s anxiety about how they are perceived by their peers.
Upperclassmen’s stress levels jump as they try to plan out their lives outside of school and how to avoid falling behind. Graduation, college, and possible careers that they may wish to pursue are on the rise. Juniors are currently stressing over the insane amount of work they are being given while they try to prepare themselves for their last year before they move on to the outside world.
Cross River Therapy, writes that 47% of students admit to being stressed almost every day and that 61% of teens ranging from the ages 13 to 17 stress over having good grades this can be heightened by the pressure that the parents put on their children’s shoulders.
Unfortunately, high schoolers and college students aren’t the only ones to experience this Cross River Therapy informs us that 50% of middle schoolers say that they feel stress every day while at least 75% of high schoolers report that they feel the same.
Kayden Dunn, a college student at UTSA, said, “The most stressed I’ve been since middle school is probably my freshman year of college just because I had to figure out what I wanted and who I am outside of high school, you know?”
The pressure to know who you are and what you want to do often is a source of stress for most college students and upperclassmen as well as feeling unprepared about how to get into a routine for adulthood.
When students are asked about their feelings about school, the most heard is that they are bored or tired, whether emotionally or physically. Many students will report that when they think about school most of the time they feel negative emotions, CHC resource library writes that after a survey involving 21,678 high school students in the U.S. led by researchers from Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Yale Child Study Center.
When Mars Woodard, a sophomore here at Doherty, was asked to rate how often and how bad their stress gets, they said, “ I would say often but also not. And when it does come around, it’s about a 4-6”
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