WOODBURY- We walk through the doors on the first day of school with fresh notebooks, planners, and a charged computer. We spend an hour getting ready to finally see friends after two months of little contact. We walk in with the illusion that this year will be much more organized and focused, yet somewhere between homecoming and finals, this goal shrinks to something much simpler:
Just make it to Friday.
Upon arriving at school on a Monday, students are immediately given a tower of assignments due next class. With their backpacks bulging with papers and books, they trudge towards the next class with hunched backs to receive a few more assignments with news of a quiz the next week.
Not only is having eight million hours of homework in your backpack physically exhausting, but having a too intense workload is mentally exhausting, too.
“Every day I come here it’s something,” says freshman Stella Stein. “Either the work load is too hard…being here, I feel, makes students, like, not happy.”
Moods seen in high school students fluctuate daily as they grow into adults; however, one mood, drained, is constant.
According to wifitalents.com, burnout among students connects to higher rates of depression and anxiety by a coefficient of 0.65. Both of these mental disorders can connect to feeling burnt out academically, causing no motivation in a student’s mindset.
With no motivation, students don’t complete those eight million hours of homework causing more damage.
Sometimes, social aspects can affect the moods of a student too.
Wifitalents.com explains that students with limited social support are 30% more likely to experience that academic burnout. When students are drained and don’t contain that motivation, keeping the spark in relationships with peers or teachers is really, really hard.
NHS counselor, Stephanie Gutierrez, says, “Meeting new people, making new friendships, both relate to the social piece. Even when they don’t love the school parts, at least come in for the social stuff.”
The counselors are there for support in that department, but sometimes they can’t help what needs fixing.
“They [teachers] try to combat it by saying go to the counselors to talk, but I feel it doesn’t help as much,” says Stein.
The six am wake up calls and late nights with homework don’t fit well together easily, causing students to be overwhelmed and stressed. Not having enough time to complete their goals makes it seem more sensible to shorten it to a simpler one: make it to Friday!
“Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are easier since I’m so close to the weekend,” said Stein. “But throughout the whole week, I just don’t want to be here.”
