Teen Stress from a Teen Perspective
Welcome back, incredible BookDuck fans! As a student, you must have experienced stress from too much homework and problems with peers and adults. Michaela also has these issues and talks about them on the TedTalks stage.
Michaela is a junior in high school. She loves to play the violin and piano and she’s stressed. Michaela is stressed about homework. She has so much homework to do every day.
She’s also stressed about not getting enough sleep both due to the homework she has to do and the extracurriculars she does from the school newspaper to the speech team to playing the violin in Youth Symphony Orchestra. It all adds stress because it all takes time. Another thing you may know is high schoolers are stressed about having all those college apps applications submitted. Michaela thought all high schoolers were just like her. Stressed about all these things and not getting enough sleep. So she decided to ask them. She created an anonymous survey and sent it out to her friends, schools and students she knew in other countries around the world. About 160 people filled it in. 160 high schoolers who Michaela thought were just like her. After reading the responses she realized that many of them were stressed about the same things she was. But what was she surprised of was how open they were about the other things that were stressing them out, the things they weren't telling other people. They weren't sharing these things with their parents, friends, therapists, or counselors. They weren't sharing these things with anyone but they shared them with Michaela.
In responses, students were asking how can Michaela help, and how can she reach out to them. She had a message for them. This message can be useful for you too. Wherever you are she sees you and cares about you and all those students who took her survey and even those who didn't.
She found out that many of the students who took her survey were more willing to share with their peers than with their parents, therapists, or counselors.
To sum up, If you’re a stressed student, find someone who will listen to you and always support you. There will always be someone who will support you and be able to help.
