Stress On High School Students: What Causes Stress?

900310531 Themed literature Mrs. Burke June 1, 2011

900310531 2 ABSTRACT In a perfect world there would be no stress. However, stress on a student in high school is expected, but every year the amount of stress placed on the student increases. Students need to learn what the cause of their stress is and they need to learn how to neutralize it. Some stress in a student helps that student focus better on their task at hand, while too much stress causes the student to go into a state of overload. One group of students that have a high stress level are those in which are involved in the AP courses. Many of the students that feel this way are the ones that take as many AP classes that their school schedule will allow. The students even take the classes if they are warned not to by their parents and school councilors. The information gathered during the research will examine why students gain their stress, how the stress affects them, and measures that schools take in order to lower student stress. By doing the research, stress on the students should be looked into to get a healthier working environment for the students and their teachers. The research done will also point out that schools arent the only stressors on high school students. In the end, with the knowledge learned in this research project, a student can effectively control, if not eliminate, the stress they place on themselves or are placed on each student by schools and outside factors.

900310531 3 Most students in high school face stress almost every day. Not only is stress faced in their school lives but in their personal, family, work lives and relationships. Some of this stress is good and the balance of the stress can be overwhelming. The overwhelming stress pushes a student to do things they would not normally do. Students with higher grades feel the stress of school even more so than a student with lower grades. Those students with higher grades feel they must continually perform at a higher pace and level in order to reach the high expectation not only teachers but parents and peers place on them and with that comes the expectation that those grade point levels will continue. Thereby in doing so, those grades and performances may place highly impractical stress levels on a person so young. That student faces outside factors that push them to the limit to do things that they may not be able to achieve. Those students with lower grade levels face a different stress. They may feel that they are underachievers and in no way can ever compete with students with higher grades. Those students struggle with the same outside forces, i.e., parents, teachers, peers and work. Every day, students feel the stress they put on themselves or that others put on them. Stress can be harmful to not only a students physical health but to their mental well-being. Stress can at times either lead a student to move beyond his or her capabilities or it can hinder whatever capabilities a student might possess. Also, a student may feel stress is put on them by the school work and homework that they receive from their teachers. Students can also put the pressure on themselves by doing too many extracurricular activities. Adaptive stress and/or negative stress will either help or hinder a students school career. By controlling a students stress level, many parents feel that their child will have a good and well rounded school experience. A student must learn how to control stress as well as relieve stress because stress plays such a major role in a students life. Stress is a normal part of a students life because everyone experiences it at least once. A

900310531 4 small amount of stress helps the students concentrate more on one task. However, if the tasks keep adding up, the stress also adds up. There are two types of stress that a student experiences, these are adaptive and negative stress. Adaptive stress helps us rise to lifes challenges. We get a buzz of energy and feel alert, (Stress 1). This type of stress helps the students to complete their work better and faster than what they normally would. Negative stress is the kind of stress that prevents someone from relaxing. This in turn leads to worry, irritability, or even panic. If students take too many classes that give out tons of work every night, the students will start to build up stress. This stress that each student builds up is negative, because negative stress is the result of too much work and if this happens, the students ability to complete the work fails, leaving them with no way to complete the work the teachers assigned to them. One of the more important factors that can put stress on an individual student is their personal life. To some, the leading cause of stress may be the break up between them and their boyfriend/girlfriend. While to others, it could be an effect from the relationships with others in their family. The Minnesota study presented students with a list of 47 common life events and asked them to identify those they had experienced in the last six months that they considered to be bad. The most common were: break up with boy/girl friend, increased arguments with parents, trouble with brother or sister, increased arguments between parents, change in parents financial status, serious illness or injury of family member, trouble with classmates, and trouble with parents, (Walker 2). All of these examples can cause a student stress, no matter how easily they are able to manage their stress. While there are quite a few students that deal with all of these factors, many only face a few of them. Many of the factors that the students stated they had dealt with were social relations, and their families economic status. When the students experienced these events, they received more stress while the stress from school kept adding up.

900310531 5 A second major factor in student stress is the workload that they receive. While homework and school work help students learn the material, the teachers sometimes give the students too much work and the student then feels overwhelmed with material. Schoolwork stresses students out, because they cannot spend time with family and friends, (Affects 3). For students to not be able to spend time with their families, this can hurt them because it doesnt allow them to enjoy their lives. On average, the students reported spending 3.07 hours each night on homework, (Conner, Pope, Galloway 2). 60.3% of the students have to drop an activity they enjoy because of their school work and other demands, (Connor, Pope, Galloway 2). The quotes state the need for schools to cut down the workload that they give the students, because they dont have time to be able to do anything else. The goal for high school students is to have fun and enjoy themselves, but they cant do that with all the work that they receive throughout the school day. Two thirds of the students indicated that homework or school work often or always kept them from sleeping, (Connor, Pope, Galloway 3). One student made a comment in the study saying that just this week I had three all-nighters in a row, (Connor, Pope, Galloway 3). Students that are not able to sleep are the ones who cannot learn the new material the correct way the next day because they are tired and falling asleep. There is a health risk to having little to no sleep. A lack of sleep can cause hallucinations to occur and it also impairs the students judgment of what is right and wrong. The workload is so great and the expectations so high, that these students feel obligated to give up recreation and sleep time as well as many aspects of a social life in order to succeed, (Pope 4). These are examples of different students describing the workload that teachers give them on a daily basis. In a 2005 poll, conducted by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, more than half the D.C. area adolescents surveyed 58 percent said school was their biggest cause

900310531 6 of stress. About 35 percent of local teens said they experienced stress frequently, compared with 27 percent of teens nationwide, (Aratani 1) while some students can handle the workload, others have to deal with the workload and other things such as: sports, work, or even caring for their younger brother or sister. The stress that these students receive from school work alone is enough to classify them in a state of depression. Their personal life pushes them into further states of depression. Each student needs to find some way that they can manage the stress that they receive from school. Some students that receive high amounts of stress are balancing many homework assignments with a job, or their daily responsibilities. When a student has a job, the job takes up a few hours of their time on certain days of the week. If the students with jobs cant balance their schoolwork with their job, they may receive an unhealthy amount of stress. Examples of a students daily responsibilities are chores, babysitting their younger siblings, outside work or a little of each of these things. Both of these responsibilities can hinder a students ability to complete their homework, which may cause the student to stress out because they think that they might not be able to get their assignments done on time. Each student wants to succeed in school, a few put so much pressure on themselves to succeed that they create their own stress. Students at Faircrest High School admit to doing things they are not proud of to succeed in school, (Pope 3). This states that students cheat by copying others on tests or quizzes, or that they have knowledge of the questions that will be on the tests or quizzes. Kevin calculates his GPA several times a day whenever he gets a test or quiz back, (Pope 11). Kevin is putting a lot of pressure on himself to succeed at school by doing well on tests and quizzes. By calculating his GPA, he can determine if he is still one of the higher ranking students in his high school class. Michelle took the SATs in March and was

900310531 7 upset about her score of 1200, and she plans on taking it again in June, (Pope 104). Both of these students put very high pressure on themselves in order to meet their own expectations because they want to get into a good college. They know that if they put pressure on themselves, it will get them into the best colleges available, and allow them to get into any career field that they want. This pressure to get into better colleges puts an extreme amount of stress on any student because the level of competition for the high ranking colleges is great as well as the low acceptance rate of these colleges. An example of a group of high level schools is the Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale. These top colleges are accepting fewer students every year. With the students pressure to perform from various factors, the students also face the stress from the workload that they receive from many of their classes. Some of the homework that the students receive is based off of things that some teachers dont or havent taught the students yet. Im stressed because I have so many pointless mundane assignments that take up large amounts of time, without actually learning anything in class. I dont mind working if Im actually learning something. I hate wasting my valuable time on assignments that dont accomplish anything for teachers and classes that dont respect me as an individual, (Connor, Pope, Galloway 3). Students just like this receive homework from teachers who havent even taught the students what the given homework is about. This behavior results in the students getting bad grades on their work, tests and exams because they are attempting to do assignments given without any help being offered. Stress can affect a student in other negative ways. These are low/no sleep, health issues such as food disorders and/or depression, loss of a social life, and giving up recreation. As stated before, the lack of sleep can affect a student by giving the student hallucinations during class or

900310531 8 cause the student to fall asleep during class. Both of these hinder the students ability to learn the material. Sometimes when students or any person feels stressed, they start to eat more food than they normally would. They eat more because they think that it helps reduce stress levels, but it leaves them with a bigger health risk than stress would. In Joyce Walkers Adolescent Stress and Depression, there are nine factors that make a person susceptible to depression. These are : history of depression and/or suicide in the family, alcoholism or drug use in family, sexual or physical abuse patterns in the family, chronic illness, eating or other disorders, death or loss in family, learning disabilities, absent/divorced parents, and family conflict, (Walker 3). These are some of the factors in general that makes someone susceptible to depression. While many students hold onto a social life outside of school, there are some who want to succeed at school so bad that they actually abandon the ability to have a social life. Students that have higher grades are more susceptible to having no social life. This is because they care more about their grades and they want to get into the top colleges. Many students give up recreation for higher grades; they may also give up the ability to play sports or participate in other types extracurricular activities. This could be a result from the student thinking that they would receive a lot of stress from their school work and they wouldnt be able to handle stress from the other activities. While having some recreational time is fun, it also helps students be able to get outside, calm down, and get rid of all the stress that they acquired during the day. There are ways for students to attempt to cut their stress down. One strategy would be for the student to drop one or even a few of their tougher classes. These classes could be AP classes or pre-college classes. Parents and school officials in the Washington, D.C. area are telling students no when the student wants to fill their class schedules with AP classes. Oakton Highs, a top school in the D.C. area, councilors were telling students how much work was

900310531 9 required for AP classes before the students got into the class. At the same time the councilors are telling students how much work is required in that class, their parents are telling their children the same thing. They are also encouraging the students to take honors classes instead. Walt Whitman High School, another top school in the D.C. area, is teaching students another way to calm down and relax. The effort to calm students has taken the form of weekly meditation sessions, (Aratani 1). These meditation sessions give students the opportunity to come after school to help release the stress from the week. By the end of one of the sessions, one student was so relaxed or exhausted, that he fell asleep, (Aratani 1). As schools start to develop different ways to help students reduce stress, the students also have to help reduce their stress themselves. This isnt easy for students who consistently receive high grades to slow down. Its also hard to slow them down because they are used to a lot of work, they want to continue with the plan they have in mind so they can receive more of a guarantee to get into a high level college. Students should attempt to limit the stress that they receive from school since it affects their health and well being. Even though students are the main factors in lowering their own stress levels, the staff at the schools can also help the student lower stress by cutting down on the amount of homework that is given. Furthermore, students should not be allowed to take as many AP classes at one time then that student is already in. Students who are able to manage and control their stress levels are easily able to live a carefree life that a teenager in high school should live. The time for adult responsibilities should learned in high school but should come after, not during. The students that dont know how to manage and control their own stress level will always face too much stress. All in all, stress of some sort is a normal factor of life, but since some students cant control their stress, that stress turns into a problem for that students

900310531 10 health and well being. As in everything, control and moderation of stress must become a learned life style and with that, the ways to reduce stress.

900310531 11 WORKS CITED Aratani, Lori. Overachieving Students Hear a New Message: Lighten Up. Washingtonpost.com. Washington Post, 6 Feb. 2007. Web. 24 May 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/ AR2007020501668>. Conner, Jerusha, Denise Pope, and Mollie Galloway. Health and Learning. Ascd.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. <http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec09/ vol67/num04/success-with-less-stress.aspx>. Joyce, Walker. Adolescent Stress and Depression. Extension.umn.edu. U of Minnesota, 2002. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/youthdevelopment/ da3083>. Pope, Denise Clark. Doing School How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Integraded publishing solutions, 2001. Print. Stress Management. Brookes.ac.uk. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.brokes.ac.uk/ student/services/health/stress.html>. What Are the Affects of Stress on High School Students? Gabriellps.edublogs.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2011.