High School Shouldn't Be A 'Race to Nowhere'

It’s lunch. I’m sitting in a room alone, just typing.

No, this isn’t a scene out of Mean Girls, where Katy takes her lunch into the bathroom stall because she has no one to eat with. There’s no tray on my lap, and I’m not being shunned by society. I’m stressed.

Stressed because I know I have a column to write, yet I have a performance to go to after school. Stressed because I know in the fraction of time I have leading up to this performance, I have hours of homework that will keep me up to see the clock rotate through numerous combinations. And stressed because the person who just walked into the room keeps crinkling a piece of plastic while I’m trying to think.

This past week, I haven’t seen my mother’s face until around 10 p.m. each night. And even then, it’s probably a millisecond, because then it’s up to my bedroom to get aboard the homework train. By the time my papers are safely stowed away in folders and packed for the next day, the lights are off throughout the house and the remainder of my family is tucked away in their beds. I’m just heading downstairs to eat dinner.

Of course, my schedule isn’t doesn’t always revolve around a 350-person performance like ’s annual variety show. But if it’s not a performance, it’s something else. It’s work. It’s community service. It’s anything other than down time.

I’m certainly not the only high school student in America who feels this way. In the last issue of The Torch, the high school’s student newspaper, the front page story was an article about . It’s the title of a documentary film about overstressed, overworked young students, and the catalyst for a campaign to reduce those pressures. One local teacher—along with hundreds of others around the country—argues that when schools stack students with tests, quizzes and homework galore, they miss out on critical time that should be spent with family, friends, or even practicing hobbies. We’re in a race—but where’s the finish line?

As a student, that message strikes home. I’ve listened to peers crying about the stress they’re under, and buckled up in the passenger seat as friends run to Walgreens to stock up on energy drinks for their all-nighters. I’ve seen meltdowns and naps in classes. When is enough enough?

We’re under so much pressure—pressure to get into a good college, to get a good job, to “make something of ourselves.” But we can’t lose sight of the important things along the way: the family and friends that we are so very blessed to have in our lives. Lately, this weird phrase has been going around the school: YOLO, meaning, “you only live once.” Isn’t it our duty to make the most of every day?

From a teacher’s standpoint, I completely get it. They have a lot to teach, and not a lot of time. Understood. But what some teachers fail to acknowledge is that we are taking more than just their class. And for some strange reason, all our classes magically seem to test on the same day. While that may be beneficial financially for as their energy drinks fly off the shelves, it’s not so good for the students.

Even though I’m a dreamer, I realize that cutting homework, tests and quizzes out of the picture altogether is completely unreasonable. We do learn valuable lessons and ideas by studying and working hard on our own. But as this campaign against the so-called “race to nowhere” suggests, having weekends and holidays free (hey, maybe even the occasional weeknight) doesn’t seem like too much to ask. We’re not all insisting on pet monkeys here.

YOLO.