Student Perspective Student Perspective

Students can have many different thaoughts regaurding school. Some bad, some good, some inbetween.

by Melody Steffen

Excitement for school seems to decrease as the years go on. As the grades increase, so does the pressure. In elementary school, students’ work is graded by ‘Great Jobs!’ or ‘Needs Improvements’. But it’s not the same for middle school and high school. School gets harder, making the excitement to achieve things for school decrease. In middle school, people start separating into groups and many students feel pressured to find the right one for them. Friend groups and cliques start to form. A student may feel they are behind if they haven’t found their group of people.

“I used to look forward to seeing my friends because of the fun things we were able to do, like recess. Now the level of excitement has dropped due to our groups splitting up,” freshman Sawyer Hennighs said.

For most school districts, students go from being in one classroom the whole school day in elementary school to shifting to different classrooms with new teachers every hour.

design by Kailtyn Von Gunten

While in high school, the grades are standard ‘A-F’, it also adds on ‘+’ and ‘-’. High school is the last transition in school as a kid before college and these grades mean a good deal. With that pressure sitting on students, it is known that a large amount of high schoolers are depressed and/or experience anxiety.

“The pressure of high school is definitely greater than the pressure of middle school but it is also an opportunity to be successful and grow. The way pressure affects a person just depends on how they look at it. Pressure is definitely one hard part of high school but a diamond cannot be constructed without pressure,” sophomore Kaitlynn Leible said.

As the days inch closer and closer to graduation, enthusiasm falls. The difficulty of classes increases when students get into high school with more amounts of of homework and less time to complete it.

“I’m taking harder classes now that I’m older so it adds a lot of stress which makes the excitement go down but at the same time, those hard classes I’m taking or the medical classes I’m doing make it more fun since it is preparing me for my future outside of high school,” junior Amari Englehardt said. A large subject that is talked about in high school is the future. Colleges, careers, graduation. While in elementary school, all that is talked about is fun. Upcoming holidays, watching movies, coloring. Because topics in school switch as a student gets older and it’s no longer all fun and games.

“I do not feel excited for school anymore, it’s not special anymore like it was in elementary school and there’s nothing fun to look forward to,” Hennigh said.

With excitement for school decreasing in students, so has the feeling of safety and security at school. That is mainly caused by recent events in the world. As students grow older and learn more about the real world, the feeling of safety at school declines as well. It is harder for a human to trust as they get older and have experienced what trusting the wrong people can do.

“We have security guards everywhere in high school so in a way I feel safer and more secure but at the same time, I feel less safe just because in elementary school everyone was all innocent and in high school, it’s like the real world where there can be physical fights and what not so I feel less safe but more safe at the same time,” Englehardt said.