Richard 2024

Hi, my name is Richard, and I am a Senior at Chelsea High School. This is my second year doing the Students Speak program, and this year I want to talk about some of the leading issues that causes everyone to struggle in their school life.

One of the main issues that plagues students is burnout caused by the pressure of always needing to actively prepare for what you’re going to be doing next – never having a chance to settle down and think.

This matters to me personally because I myself am a victim of burnout. I’ve noticed that this is something that not just me, but everyone experiences at some point during grade school, high school, college and afterwards.

I started to feel burnout at the end of the fall semester of senior year. I was incredibly unmotivated, and my brain was convinced that I’d already done my best and I just needed to cruise through the rest of the school year while doing the bare minimum.

The pressure from my school to do your best and overachieve at all times in order to go straight to college was a very unhealthy mindset to follow and contributed to me feeling burnout. Some of my friends were taking early college classes which would become very difficult with juggling the end of high school, and I noticed that it was impacting them the same way it impacted me. It often seems like too much to handle.

During this time, I had been taking an extra class during the lunch period without receiving credit for it. This class was a music production class, and since I am personally very interested in music as a whole, this class was a good fit for me. Because of that, it made me feel like I wasn’t being forced to succeed in the class and it something I was doing on my own and not an expectation.

This helped alleviate my feeling of burnout. However, this was something I had to seek out on my own.

My school does not promote or ensure that options like this are widely available to students who may benefit from a low stakes activity that they’re passionate about. Instead, there is a lot of pressure to overachieve and participate in activities that make you a “better college applicant,” and there is not a lot of encouragement to pursue things you enjoy.

I think there should be a school cultural awareness that allows students to understand that it’s completely acceptable to not follow the traditional high school-to-college pipeline, and it’s okay for people to go out into the world and bring some experiences to the college classroom environment later in life. People should feel like they have the choice to determine their own path at their own pace. Students should be made aware that it’s okay to be “late” and not go straight to college after high school graduation.

Something that could be helpful would be a potential trial for students to help them determine whether college is right for them, such as allowing them to take a semester-long course that is no stakes. Depending on how they feel afterwards, they should have the choice to continue or choose something else if they don’t like it.

Policymakers can also help promote more of a “take it at your own pace” mentality. They can make policies to help with the societal pressure that has a narrow idea of what student success looks like.

Policy makers can help alleviate this pressure by letting students know that they can potentially pursue college later in life or not at all. For example, making people more aware of alternatives like community colleges and trade schools. Also, it’s important to ensure that students know that if they don’t want to pursue any of those paths, that is also okay.

Please support Safe and Supportive schools by integrating into students minds their options and alternatives to seeking education after high school to support students’ mental health and help prevent burnout. By recognizing and supporting students’ individual goals and needs, we can better humanize our school communities and allow students to succeed as they see fit.