Dear High School,

There is a lot of speculation on the anxiety and mental instability that school causes on students, I can speak on that matter. I am currently taking five AP classes. The amount of work I encounter is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. Now, I know every student complains about doing homework, but I stay up until midnight or later on some nights just because I have tons of homework to do. I had a mental breakdown the other night because my brain was shutting down from how stressful my day was at school. By mental breakdown, I mean I was craving brownies and my mom jokingly said that I that it was a chocolate cake not brownies and I started crying about it. Not "laughing so hard that I cried", no, a "I am so stressed out all I wanted were some brownies and I can't even have any."

My friends have had mental breakdowns due to a class or two. Before high school, I loved school, but now that I have gotten into high school I hate it, you don't have time to balance anything anymore. How do you expect me to go to school for 8 hours, participate in extracurricular activities, have a social life, complete all my homework, and get a good nights rest when you assign AT LEAST two hours of homework a night? I am tired of having to tell people that I can't go get dinner with them because I have homework to do. Please, all I ask is for you to take the students' well-being into account when you schedule two tests on one day and a packet of problems to do in two days.

I am so tired when I go to school that I have a cup of coffee in my hand, a bottle of water in my bag, and a dollar or two to buy a Mellow Yellow half way through the day just to survive eight hours of school. Not only am I struggling with school work, I am also president of two clubs so that I have a "well-rounded" application for college. I remember when I first came to high school you said, "we want you to have a fun time in high school, not just have to worry about doing our schools work." Well, I am a senior, and yes, I have had those random fun moments when I am not worrying about school but I have a lot of moments when I worry about my grade and how well my paper is written.

Anyways, my point to this article was to show that school stresses people out. I have had days where I just come home and cry because I am so stressed out. Just, please take the students' well-being into account before we go into a mental hospital from the insane amount of stress school causes.

Sincerely,

Concerned Student