Alessandra Lechuga Jan 2020

Do you feel free or do you feel trapped?

Without any doubt I would say that I feel trapped. The feeling began to hit me

hard last year in grade 11, all the extra intellectual work from my academic courses,

being that it was my first year in IB. However, grade 12 has been very overwhelming for

me all throughout with no near endpoint to this feeling. This is due to many reasons. One,

as I briefly mentioned above, is because of the many higher level academic courses that I

am taking, being 4 higher level IB courses as well as biology 12. With these courses, I am

constantly stressing and worrying about homework and studying especially with IB

exams coming up in a few months. For these reasons, I never have any time to myself

because I have to spend it doing homework and/or studying, and whenever I do decide to

take some time to myself, I do not enjoy it because I feel unproductive and stressed about

all the things I could be doing. Another issue is that not only are these classes hard, but

they are also courses that I am not generally interested in. This really unmotivates me to

try my best and often leads to having a bad mental state of not wanting to do the things

you are doing for long periods of time. My heavy loaded extracurriculars and work also

take up most of my time. On Monday I volunteer at the hospital right after school till

about 6:30pm, on Tuesday I work from 3 to 6 then have to go to ukulele rehearsal from 6

to 9, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays I generally have one or more ukulele concerts

to go to. This leaves me with only Wednesday and Sunday left, however, on Sundays my

parents expect me to spend it all with family by going to church then to dinner with my
whole family. Aside from all of these extracurriculars, I am also a part of the SOS and

Sustainability club at the school. All of these activities I am involved in take up a lot, if

not all of my time, therefore any small gap of free time that I may get, I have to spend

doing homework because I do not get any other time to do so. This leaves me feeling

like I am in a weekly cycle of doing the same things over and over again every week with

no escape. I never have time to hang out with my friends or have some time to myself, or

to rest, or to even eat a proper meal. I am always in a hurry, always stressed, always

behind at school trapped. Every week I tell myself that I just need to get through this

week, then the next week I tell myself the same thing and so on, it is almost never

enjoyable. In all honesty I do not know how I have handled to live like this since

September and I do not know if I will be able to last until June. I have no time to take

care of myself physically, emotionally, or mentally, I can feel myself turning into a very

unhealthy person yet I cannot seem to do anything about it because I do not have the time

for that.