Me, Myself, and Stress

Photo provided by Creative Commons

Photo provided by Creative Commons

 

 

 

High school comes with stress, whether it be stress from school, home, relationships, or sports. For many Ripon High School students, the mixture of all these different factors that cause stress is the most difficult to handle.

Stress from home can be caused by the high expectations set by family members, stress from sports can be because of time management difficulty, school stress may be from keeping up with grades or struggling to raise a grade in a certain class, and relationship stress may be from attempting to maintain relationships while dealing with other stress.

We interviewed someone affected by each type of stress to see what effects the stress causes, what they learn from it, and what specifically makes high school stressful for them. Junior Dallas Waters was interviewed about the effects of home stress, senior Amanda Wesley was interviewed for school or education related stress, junior Mikayla Van Lewen was interviewed for sport-related stress, and sophomore Nico Ilardi was interviewed for overall stress, since he is involved in harder classes, band, ASB Leadership, and sports year round.

Waters has challenging expectations to live up to in school because his parents want him to have good grades and match up to his sisters who have already graduated.

“High school is stressful for me because of having pressures from my family to do very well in school and receive exceptional grades,” Waters said.

The constant pressure of maintaining good grades in high school affects Waters both positively and negatively.

“The stress has been beneficial to my grades, but the negative aspect is that I am always under stress and don’t get to relax a lot,” Waters stated.

Waters has been able to learn a lesson out of his school-related stress to help him throughout high school.

“I learned that I always need to be conscious of all of my assignments and tests or quizzes so I can achieve my expectations,” Waters explained.

Many students also feel difficulty keeping up with other issues, such as relationships. The stress can seem to get in the way to giving full attention to something else.

“The stress makes it harder to keep up with your friendships and relationships with people, especially because school-related stress affects social life,” Waters said.

Wesley takes a lot of AP(Advanced Placement) classes to obtain a great GPA and has a good understanding that high school comes with stress and one has to maintain everything to be successful.

“High school causes stress for me because it is a lot of balancing, and we are also expected to do well in school and other activities at the same time,” Wesley said. “So, it’s basically time management.”

Wesley explained how stress has affected her throughout her high school career.

“It sometimes affected me negatively with stress and anxiety, but it also gets me interactive and motivated,” Wesley stated. “The stress now teaches you how to deal with stress down the road and valuable skills for beyond high school.”

 

Stress for schoolwork can also cause students to not go wherever they want whenever they want.

“Stress affects my relationships because sometimes you have to put studying first instead of football games or going out with your friends,” Wesley said.

Van Lewen is a junior who plays two sports at RHS, but when she is playing girls’ basketball, she plays club volleyball at the same time. She has had a lot of experience with stress because she has to balance schoolwork with two sports at the same time.

“The stress affects me positively because it helps me manage my time, but I also get anxiety and get jittery by thinking about everything I have to do,” Van Lewen stated.

Van Lewen’s experience with stress has also helped her learn valuable lessons to help her deal with the stress.

“I have learned how to manage my time and to not procrastinate when doing my homework,” Van Lewen said. “ I have also learned to turn off my phone when doing work so I don’t get distracted.”
 Nico Ilardi is a sophomore who fully invests himself at Ripon High. He is involved in football, basketball, golf, ASB, and band.

“If you’re involved in a lot of sports and harder classes like Leadership and band, it’s a lot so if you try to balance it, that helps,” Ilardi said.

Ilardi has learned that managing the stress effectively helps to lessen it.

“Sometimes I’m stressed and stay up late for homework because of a game or practice, but I try to stay positive and work efficiently,” Ilardi stated.

Although, stress affects how one acts, whether sometimes it is good or sometimes it may be bad.

“Stress helps me because it improves my ability to work through things even when you have lots of work, but it can also cause me to be moody or tired due to a lack of sleep,” Ilardi explained.

Most high school students deal with stress, whether it be for schoolwork or many things at the same time. Students’ experience with stress has taught them valuable lessons, including Wesley who has dealt with high school stress for four years. “I have learned that sometimes it is necessary and most of the time it can be manageable.”