Problems With School – A High School Short Story by Ryan Malkowski – Reedsy Prompts

2 comments

High School

For many schools nowadays is a breeding ground for stress where things can pile up and you can get more and more worried and anxious about keeping up. Many students, especially those in high school can struggle with this every single day. Students go to school each day from 8-2:30 and go through the same routine each day. This can get very tiring very fast and can lead to bad time management, stress and other things. Many students also have other activities outside of school like sports, work, clubs and volunteer work. This can take up many hours each day and along with school can take almost all of our energy out of us before people even get home. Along with all of this people can have hours of homework which can cause them to stay up late and get even less sleep than they already do. For some students this can be too much and they can slowly start falling behind and starting to not do their homework and school work. Students know this is bad but they will keep doing it because they are in need of a large break. This can cause many students to start being stubborn with themselves and doing work.

This is a big problem that affects almost every high school student and can cause major disruptions in focus and in mental health. But people will keep doing it. Students can have too much on their plate and in a sense give up on school and homework to give themself a break throughout the day. For many people this is frowned upon by parents and teachers but they will then take a break themselves. 

Falling into this cycle is very bad for the student. They start struggling to get their work done and after a week of not doing the work they become stubborn with themselves and start not doing it ever. Students will know that they need to do the work but in the back of their mind they are telling themselves something completely different. This then in turn makes the student feel stubborn with themselves.

This can also translate to the parents. Most parents nowadays can see their children’s grades with the few clicks of a button. If these grades don’t meet their standards then the parents will usually get mad and punish the kid. This does not make the student feel amazing about themselves and it makes them feel anger towards their parents. This can also create stubbornness in a student with them feeling like they need to do something against their parents and their schoolwork and grades. This kid falls into another endless cycle of stubbornness and anger towards their parents and the schoolwork. 

The other outside influence that can make the student very stubborn is the actual school themselves and the teachers in the school. Not doing schoolwork can lead to teachers treating you differently because you are not a good student or because you are not good in the classroom. This is usually not the case because most students are just stressed and have bigger problems than schoolwork that they have to deal with. This with the treatment by some teachers can create anger and stubborness to do anything in class between the student and the school. This whole cycle can make the student very unfocused and not successful in the classroom. Many students do not want this to happen and try so hard to not let it happen by being stubborn with themselves about just getting it done, but many times it cannot just be done.

Besides from being angry at teachers and parents many students can feel regret when they choose to not do the work. They feel as if it is not their choice to not do the work and that it is because of all the stress and outside influences they have on their life everyday. This feeling of regret is never with the stubborn thinking and feelings that come with not wanting to do the work. This is a type of feeling where it is not up to the student to control their punishments, it’s up to the outside world.

There are cycles that students can fall into and go through their whole schooling experience. These can be good or bad cycles when looked at from both ways. But in the end both cycles end with a sense of stubbornness in the way that they are thinking. They think they can’t change what they have done and that what’s done has been done. I cannot go and do this work now, it’s in the past and I have no motivation to do it. This is how most students feel at the end of these cycles. The two cycles are to just try and push through the work that they have to do and not care about the stress and outside influences around them. The other cycle is to feel defeat to the stress and outside influences and to not do the work they need to do. Both of these can be really bad and can end up with the student feeling lost. But at the end of both cycles students will feel a sense of stubbornness.

Many many students throughout the world can feel stressed about school work. Some choose to try and be stubborn with themselves telling themselves that if they do not get the work done then they are a failure. This can cause an endless spiral of the feeling that they have to get it done no matter what is in front of them at that very moment. Others feel that they simply cannot get it done no matter how stubborn they are with themselves. They end up not doing the work and then end up feeling regretful shortly after not being able to do the work. Many students fall into one of these cycles and throughout both they become stubborn with themselves thinking to themselves that they cannot change their thinking and that this is the only way to work this out, by failure or stress and loss of motivation.