Advanced classes, hours of homework, weekday jobs, sports and clubs, and a social life: this describes the average life of a student. It’s no wonder that breakdowns and stress are now normal things for teenagers.

“Between being the UNICEF vice president, participating in Eagles Helping Eaglets, being a member of NHS, being an event coordinator for the Argyle Youth Advisory Council, and being a horseback rider, I rarely have very much time to relax and rest,” junior Brooke Daniel said.

Many students who participate in several activities have to sacrifice their sleep in order to keep up with all of their work and hobbies.

“During marching season, I usually don’t get home until 10:00, and once I do, I generally have hours of homework to do,” junior Haley Emerson said. “I get four to five hours of sleep on average.”

Schedules of many students are incredibly cluttered and hectic.

“I’m in five advanced classes which means more homework than you can imagine,” junior Reeves Mosley said. “By the time I finally finish, it’s 1:00 a.m., and I’ve got to wake up at 6:00 for band the next day.

On top of their eight hour school day, some students also have part-time jobs to tend to.

“On a normal afternoon, I go home, get dressed in my uniform, and go to work for five hours,” junior Samantha Terrell said. “When I get home, I have about an hour and a half of homework when there’s not a quiz or test the next day.”

With all of their extracurricular activities that they must attend, students rarely have time to hang out with friends during the week.

“I get home at 10:00 or 10:30 nearly every night,” Junior Caleigh Ramsey said. “I almost never get to relax alone or with friends.”

Without any time to relax, teenagers build up stress pretty quickly, making them prone to breakdowns and illness.

“Nearly every night, I can’t get to sleep until around 12:00 or 1:00 a.m.,” Daniel said. “Without getting a lot of sleep, I get sick incredibly often. I feel like the last time that I felt completely healthy was summer time.”

With seven classes to worry about, students can’t help but feel overwhelmed.

“I’m not sure if teachers realize or care that we have six other classes when they assign us an hour of homework every night,” Emerson said. “I’m sure they’re not intentionally trying to make us stressed, but that’s certainly what’s happening.”

Even if students feel like they’re getting sick and need a break from school, they’re too afraid to miss classes or ruin their option of exempting finals.

“There have been so many times when I’ll wake up feeling terrible, but I still force myself to go to school,” Ramsey said. “Make up work is one of the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with.”

When students do have to miss school for either sports or other important things, they are swamped with worksheets, quizzes, and tests that they missed.

“I was in a car wreck and got a major concussion where I couldn’t go to school for three weeks,” junior Haley Balch said. “When I came back, I had days worth of makeup work, and I just felt so overwhelmed.”

Many students feel like they shouldn’t be so stressed all of the time at such a young age.

“I thought these were supposed to be the days of our lives,” Emerson said, “but when I look back on high school, all I’ll remember is worrying about whether or not my grades were good.”

Some teenagers feel like there isn’t very much hope in decreasing the amount of stress that they’ve nearly become accustomed to.

“Until there are more hours in the day, we probably won’t get a break from the constantly busy schedules we have,” Mosely said. “Being stressed is just something everyone has kind of accepted.”

Others feel like there could be a change in the amounts of stress, but it would be hard to come by.

“There are so many factors that go into making our lives so busy,” Daniel said. “But if people stop expecting teenagers to do so much, then we won’t feel so pressured to do so much.”