High School is a place that everyone goes in their lives. Everyone has different high school experiences, but there is one thing that high school brings to every person, pressure. Everyone knows that what you do in high school dictates where you go to college and after college where you go in life. If you don’t do well in high school you won’t be accepted into many colleges, if any. The pressure of a students’ future is a big burden to hold by itself. High School is a high-pressure part of any human’s life on its own, but with the added pressures of immense homework and parental expectations students become overwhelmed and can often collapse under the pressure.

With the natural pressures of high school constantly on students’ minds, a large amount of homework doesn’t help a constantly operating mind. High school is a big leap from middle school because every day there is homework in high school, often in all seven classes. The brain can only absorb so much information in a day, and what a student learns while doing homework sometimes cannot be retained. Also, a big homework load can cause late nights and less sleep for students. Without 7.5 hours of sleep students become up to 32% less alert during the important hours of school in the day. Thus, the sleep debt that too much homework can cause hurts the students learning process the next day and then when they get home that day and stay up doing their homework they continually get less sleep. This is terrible because students develop habits of under sleeping and their bodies are not as rejuvenated for the next day. Teachers may say that students are screwing around when they get home from school and because of that it takes students longer to get their homework done than it should. Yes, that may be true for some students, but many students have after school sports, and they get home later and have to get right to their homework. Also, students are now hooked into many other extracurricular activities for the sake of their high school résumés. As a high school student playing sports, I know how much time homework eats into my sleep and each night I seem to get used to less sleep, hurting my natural habits. Teachers may not take into account the students who get home later and those students are susceptible to sleep deprivation.

Pressure is also thrust upon students by their parent’s expectations. Grades are not just important to students but also to their parents. Parents want the very best for their kids but they sometimes don’t realize that they are laying extra pressure on them. They expect their kids to do as well or even better that they did. Parents push their kids with expectations of perfect grades and extra curricular activities, students are afraid to do anything wrong and fearing loss causes people not to reach out and ask questions and as a result students do not learn up to their full potential. Pope, author of "Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miss Educated Students," said even young students quickly understand that the real parental pressure is for grades, not knowledge, so sometimes cheating is the simplest path. Teachers cheat, too, inflating grades because it's easier than fighting with parents. Some parents might say that they survived and because they could do it when they were in high school their kids should be able to do it today. But, the truth is high school is not the same today as it was back then, with the budget cuts, their are less choices for kids in school, and there is just more expected of students today. As stated earlier to get into colleges in present times many extracurricular activities are helpful and with the addition of sports students seem to never have a free moment. With our economy in the state it is in there are less job opportunities making schooling that much more important for students futures.

With the excessive pressures of parents and homework, students are under unneeded stress day in and out. They are not allowed any free time and when they go to bed all they are thinking is about what is going to happen the next day. The pressures of high school are not doing anything for the students but loading stress on their lives. High School should be about school but it should also be a fun and memorable experience in a person’s life.