Tia Faulkner (2026) a student at Westerville North High School, takes mainly honors classes and is in her second year of taking two languages, Spanish and ASL. On the average school day Faulkner gets home from school but does not have much time before she has to get ready for lacrosse and come back to North for her practices or any games she may have.
According to Neighmond, grades are one of the biggest stress-holders in a student’s brain but the stress is not only caused by grades alone.
Students are required to balance outside of school activities such as chores, sports, music and art lessons, with their workload just to keep their decent grades, for some that is a passing grade of C or above, but for others that may be all A’s. It all depends on the student and their goals, but no matter the goal, students may struggle with maintaining their grades while participating in outside-of-school activities.
Depending on the day, the time Faulkner arrives back at home varies. Regardless, she eats dinner and then does her homework, which tends to take a few hours to complete. Then she tries to get to bed at a decent hour, but usually that goal is not met due to her amount of school work.
She strives to keep her grades above a B at all times, but with her extracurriculars and social life, it can be difficult to find a balance. Trying to find this balance causes a lot of stress for Tia and negatively affects her mental health as she tries to find time to hang out with friends and family, but also prioritize her schoolwork and sport.
“I think it is hard to find time to also hang out with friends and make sure that I stay on top of my work. And that definitely negatively impacts my mental health,” Faulkner said.
School stress comes from social situations, heavily weighted tests and exams, public speaking when presenting, big group projects, or any other work that could present unmeetable demands.
School work causes stress, which Faulkner admitted affects her ability to concentrate during the school day and when completeing homework.
“[Stress] has made it difficult to focus at times, actually a lot of the time,” Faulkner said.
Exams are highly valued by students, but they don’t compare to the stress that standardized tests inflict on students. In fact, many colleges are requiring high SAT scores for admission post-pandemic and it is stressing students out.
Faulkner said that she does experience high levels of stress during exams. She said, “I know that they play a big part in my grade and I hold myself to very high standards when it comes to my grade.”
While homework can help a student in many different ways – time management, proper usage of materials, revision discipline, Stanford studies show that too much homework can overwork and stress them out.
Students put pressure on themselves to perform well in school so that they can follow the traditional path of school, college, job, retirement. But when the work is too overwhelming, the pressure doubles and becomes too much for them.
“I do feel pressure to perform well on my school work, I think it mainly comes from myself,” Faulkner said.
