Getting a job is something most high schoolers have to go through, and if you have achieved employment, you know for sure how hard the balance between school, studying, clubs, sports and work is. As someone who is the co-editor-in-chief of the Hawkeye and works about 20 hours a week, school becomes an afterthought for me. Waking up at 5:45 a.m. and getting home at 9:30 p.m. is one of the hardest things your brain has to go through, and doing that four days a week makes burnout occur weekly for most. The school system is a system that is set up to cram and cram with no extra time for you to have free time. Affording food is the biggest cost to most high schoolers, with most spending thousands a year on food just to have a time with their friends.
Obviously, to get money, you need to work, but the minimum wage is only $16.60 in this area, so you have to work a lot to afford anything. To get a better and bigger job, you are required to graduate from high school and, for most, go to college. All of that combines into debt. To rent an apartment in most areas within a 10-mile radius, you need $2,000 a month just for rent itself. All of this is on the mind of every working high school student, and with all of this on their mind, getting one F in a class can jeopardize their whole future as they know it, making all of the hundreds of hours of school they went through mean nothing. All of this connects to one thing and one thing only: capitalism.
Capitalism and the free market control everything for all of us. People state, well, just put your boots on and work, but working 70 hours a week at a minimum wage job won’t even afford a house in Washington state. Success is the killer of confidence, and the attribute of failing in school is the scariest piece of high school life. I touched on it already, but to blend the parts of failing a class can set you back from a doctor to a minimum wage job for your life. Failing classes comes at you like a ballistic missile. One day, you can have all A’s and not be failing anything. The next day, half of your classes are missed because you got too busy to get all your work done, and you have an actual job you fall behind in every class. You may say jumping right back on the assignments may be the move to achieve your grades back, but spring has started. Going to school, going to a club for an hour, heading straight to work and coming home at 9 p.m. does not give students enough time to do homework and succeed in life. This is without mentioning the social hardship that falls upon students to continue to have friendships with legitimately zero hours of free time. This creates a trickle-down effect onto even more problems, especially within the mental health of a student. Mental health crumbles under the stresses of schooling. The combination of not seeing your friends enough, not having any time to relax and bring your inner peace back to yourself, and lastly being able to fit your spiritual practices into your time becomes a case that kills your mental health. Mental health destroys your physical health when it falls to a low point. As your physical health declines, you become a shell of yourself with zero motivation, making getting the hundreds of hours of school and work done the hardest activity to go through.
Yes, MTHS has an exceptional counselor program, but missing a class or staying after school makes your world a whole new pain. Missing classes sets you back days of work that take hours to make up, and time, almost no one has to do work on subjects that don’t result in the majority of careers people go into. The biggest issue with all of this is how the teachers refuse to accommodate your mental health. A large number of teachers see students who come to class every day, try their hardest but have a very challenging time turning in work. The teachers don’t make exceptions and help the students with extra time; a majority of them make it a no-late-turn-in policy, again making the world an even harder place during school to get the exact grades you want. The solutions to this laundry list of problems are a majority of ideas. Firstly, as a student, you can create a calendar either on paper, a whiteboard or a phone to divide up what work needs to get done. Prioritize the biggest parts of your life, like work and major assignments. Once you get those done, it makes getting the smaller assignments less tedious. Secondly, condition your mind to get onto the right sleep and balance of work and schoolwork life. Finding the balance is a super hard process, and the easiest way to start this balance is to limit your screen time. Wasted time on your phone staring at the blue lights ruins the retinas of your eyes. This sounds like a plausible solution, and it is possible if you have access. Time to read, time to go hiking and time to just be outside and enjoy the world are the only other real options in this extremely digitized world.
Lastly, just take some time to practice community get-togethers. Whether you go to a place of worship or just hang out with some friends, every single human being is in desperate need to socialize more. This generation is on pace to be the most alone generation, and the only way to make sure your brain stays afloat in this harsh reality of being on the edge of becoming an adult, you need to hold your friendships as close as possible so you don’t miss out on them. Friends make your work life a comfortable place.
