The Yellow Stall

By Hannah Pomeranzeva

You walk down the corridor of school, fist gripping the hallway pass. The air thins in your lungs and wont come out. the walls all around sink into your flesh and their hidden eyes watch every step, every twitch. you duck inside the bathroom, crouch on the cold ,hard ground of a suffocating yellow stall, and bury your head in your arms. you need a moment alone, away from class. somewhere where you will be safe from the impossible fractions and never ending algebra.

In the next couple moments your going to take a breath, raise your sunken head off of your aching arms and pick yourself up. Your going to return to class, and pretend to listen. Between multiple advanced placement classes, intense after school sports and extracurriculars, this is your only time to breathe.

This is not a unique story of a singular person. Far too often students' complaints and anxieties are taken as them being lazy or unfocused. The overwhelming expectations and pressure pounded on students today is labeled as the bare minimum, but those who go above and beyond to prove themselves, end up losing something much more important - themselves.

An aggressive schedule not only tires high school students out, but also concocts a negative mindset. Nothing is ever good enough - I'm not good enough. According to Globe NewsWire, as of 2019, 45% of high school students reported feeling stressed all the time. On a 10-point scale, American teens have rated their stress rate at an average score of 5.8, compared to normal values of 3.8. a consequence of this, is teen depression.

Currently About 57% of high school girls and 31% of high school boys feel sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row, such that they stop doing activities that they love and enjoy. Social situations are also a source of stress for teens. We feel a pressure to fit in, to be popular, and to have a lot of friends - whether they are real or not. The past two years have highlighted that.

As we come out of the shock of the pandemic, we begin to see the consequences that, one way or another, affect every single teenager. Within one year - a year of captivity, online school, and minimal to no social interaction - anxiety and depression rates in students have soared a shocking 25% increase. Social anxiety has increased and students are constantly trying to make up academically for the disruptive learning of online school.

We get a sense of being left behind and not being able to catch up. It creates a repetitive cycle, we get lost in it and struggle to find a way out.

But where do the pressures and expectations to constantly achieve something come from? Nobody knows where they're going. No one is 100% certain what career they're going to pursue or what they're going to be like once they graduate. Yet, today’s school system expects little to no slip ups, they encourage us to explore different hobbies and interests, yet expect us to know exactly what we're doing and where we're going.

Our focus is shifted on college and the future - which is always uncertain - instead of the present. The whole concept of high school is to get in - consistently prove yourself, as if we're not good enough in the first place - and rush to get out. Grades overtake happiness, and hobbies and interests become just another point on your college application. And so, as adults, we're going to do the same thing.

We're going to look to the future, and rarely enjoy what we have. Always wanting more, and yet never having enough. were going to remember our teen years as the pressure we felt, and those daily trips to the yellow stalls.

Adolescence is a fragile age, an age to explore and discover who you are and learn from mistakes. But Today's world - and the school system - doesn't leave much room for mistakes.