Essays I've Written for School

Investigative Journalism Essay(Not Professional!)

School is the Real Nightmare

Walking through those halls, constantly being pushed around, your footsteps barely heard above the ruckus. You hear the first warning bell, but people won't get out of your way. Your quiet "excuse me,"'s can't be heard because of your refusal to talk loudly. But finally, you can make your way through the crowd, even though the second warning bell has rung. You simply sigh as you open the wooden classroom door to algebra.

"Glad you could finally join us." says the teacher with disappointment in their tone. You avert your eyes not wanting to actually see it. You heard them give a long, drawn-out sigh. You squeeze your books even closer to your chest, your heart clenching at the sadness you felt crawling up your body. You could feel it's cold hands wrap around your neck, you could hear it's whispered taunts. You could feel the warm, salty tears threatening to blast out like a faucet. But you just bit your lip and sat at your desk, feeling the cold seat send prickles on your thighs. Your hands shook at you reprimanded yourself harshly at how stupid you are. You can hear the creature's quiet laughs as if it agrees with your thoughts. How often does this happen? Maybe once or twice a week, maybe a few times over the course of a month, or maybe even every day. In a survey in 2014 is showed that 64.5% of teens had said a teacher has affected them unfavorably.

The severity of mental illness and stress has skyrocketed in recent years. Students are being told it's they're generation's responsibility to fix the problems the one before them had made. They're being told, that if they don't take the step up to help, their all going to crumble to pieces. Why do you think the depression and anxiety rate in children has gone up so much in such a short amount of time. Maybe it's because they're trying to hold the weight of the world on our shoulders, homework and school projects being shoved in their faces and being told it's only going to help us. An anonymous middle school student had shared a very personal story of something that happened to them:

"Everyday I get on the bus, go to school, do the best that I can in classes, then I get on the bus again, and go home. Same thing every day. But at home I get told 'do better', 'it's not good enough'. the pressure that my grandparents put on me is then taken to school, where I get so pressured I have a hard time paying attention, and I fail to get work in. My grandparent's words that they said to encourage me then made me my own critic. I now think that I can't do anything right. I think I'm just going to end up sleeping in a ditch, then dying of starvation. Even my own dream of being a photographer can't give me enough motivation. Not to mention the bullying I go through. Even when I make the tiniest mistake, I had once said, 'the chart is counting by elevenths'. Even though I muttered it, my teacher and everyone else heard. The teacher had politely said 'nope'. But this one student felt the urge to say 'Yeah, stupid'. The chart had actually been counting by 22's. But despite is being such a small mistake that anyone could've made, I still felt like I was a huge disappointment. I feel that no matter how hard I try, it's never good enough.

My self-esteem had plummeted in 6th grade. I now wonder why my friends stay with me. I wonder why they haven't bullied me. I've contemplated suicide once, just because the weight of the pressure felt too heavy. I couldn't find anything when I had attempted, nothing would kill me. I was too afraid to hang myself because I didn't want to suffocate and have a slow death. I didn't want to bleed out because, I felt I was too weak, and I didn't want to make such huge cuts, even though I had cut. I didn't want to feel the pain of that. So I thought that overdosing on painkillers would do the trick, but I couldn't find any. I had been in and out of therapy, but it didn't feel like it was helping anything at all. I've had trust issues for a long time, and PTSD. I just didn't want anyone to know. I'll be open to tell people what happened, but I'll play it off like it was nothing and it's all in the past, even though it keeps pulling me back. By now I'm not even sure why I'm sad. I just am, I cry often when I'm alone. My friend had moved away, they don't even know how much they made me want them. I needed them, and now I'm starting to fall back into that depressive state. Because of PTSD, I've developed social anxiety, and I have a very large fear of men in their 20's to 30's. All of this is making me fail school, and it sucks because I want to do well. I'm an A B student. And it doesn't help that my grandparents seem to still think I'm their happy little girl now. If only I could tell them, I wonder where I would be now."

According to phsycologytoday.com, "The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average patient in the early 1950's" (How Big a Problem is Anxiety?). These patients in the 1950s were in asylums, think about your kid being there. Think about how scary that is, and think that schools and homes are making them like that. Another middle school student claims: "sometimes when I look at the pile of homework I received I can feel my heart hit my stomach. Just thinking about how much I had missed in three days of being sick.". This middle school student had the flu for three days but had been pushed by their grandparents to go back to school.

Want to hear another scary thing? Depression and Anxiety are the two most common mental illnesses in teens. These teenagers who used to be these children with big smiley faces, who were rambunkshus, were the tiny hand wrapped around your finger, who are now suffering, and most suffer alone. 51% of teens are scared to talk to their parents about personal struggles. Teens sigh and scoff at you when you yell at them, but maybe their holding back tears and only did the wrong thing to see if it would make them feel better. You may never know unless they tell you.

90% of teens hold emotional scars as of 2014. Generation X is suffering. 46% of teens in 2014 had confessed that they had contemplated suicide. What if that had been your child, grandchild, foster child, what would you think now? That may have been from 2014 but think how much that number could have risen. 1 out of 2 teens has personally said they had dealt with mental illness in 2014. 64.7% of teens have said that school life is more stressful than home life. Suicide is the 2nd most common way to die between the ages 10-34 years old.

This is a huge problem, were running ourselves down into the dirt. There needs to be a solution. Parents and guardians, learn boundaries between you and your teen, make sure they know you trust them, never force them to keep good grades. School is hard, and they are probably trying their best. Try to be more like a friend instead of a parent, until you need to be a parent. Home is a place to relax, not be pushed closer to the breaking point. By taking small steps, maybe we change this downslide.

Words: 1312

Sources:

Anonymous student 1, personal communication, November 19th, 2019.

Anonymous student 2, personal communication, November 19th, 2019.

Nami.org. (2019). Mental Health By the Numbers | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness. [online] Available at: https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the-numbers [Accessed 8 Nov. 2019].

Stageoflife.com. (2014). Statistics on High School Students and Teens. [online] Available at: https://www.stageoflife.com/StageHighSchool/OtherResources/Statistics_on_High_School_Students_and_Teenagers.aspx [Accessed 12 Nov. 2019].

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). Data and Statistics on Children's Mental Health | CDC. [online] Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html [Accessed 8 Nov. 2019].