By Andrew Yoshioka

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—High-school students around the world are consumed by stress daily, and students around the Silver Creek campus are no different. The global COVID-19 panic had left many fearing for their lives in the months prior to any major change, and the shift to distance-learning did not help matters. I personally found the 2020-2021 school year much more difficult as it was harder to focus and the lack of closer distance took out a lot of the support most students would have needed. The work I did that year was noticeably lower quality than those of the years prior: my grades have gone down to the point of a few D's.

This year has proven to be just as difficult: perhaps even more. Due to having an early schedule, my sleep schedule had once again become much more unhealthy, and it had proven harder to stay awake in class. More students have been reported to have been skipping classes, and even more so not retaining knowledge when asked in class. Returning to the swing of things after a year out of it proved difficult for me, and I'm sure it has for others as well.

Sometimes it's easy to find myself having a hard time opening SchoolLoop.

Not to mention, this year had also become my senior year, and due to spending my junior year in quarantine I wasn't as prepared to choose what colleges to apply to or what to write for the applications. It became an issue of paranoia: feeling like I'm not doing enough, unsure where I want to go or what I want to do, if I was even prepared for adulthood and independence, those thoughts filled my head. I was falling behind, and as I write this I still feel behind: this article is written under heavy pressure from homelife and school life, all combined into one giant ball of, you guessed it, stress. Not to social life, my own anxiety, and countless other issues that I personally have to deal with. It feels as if I eagerly await every weekend and break just to breathe, and when they come I only fail to relax from the countless homework and decisions in my day-to-day life. It's gotten to the point where extreme burn-out overcomes me even after only a few minutes of work.

I've decided to ask some questions to some students on if they were feeling stressed as well. These questions regarded stress, anxiety, and other similar subjects. Noel Martinez states "I had to drop two of my classes due to being overwhelmed."

Overall I'm just fairly overwhelmed with school, and I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same way about it, regardless of their backgrounds. If there's one thing I find solace in, it's the fact that I can confide in other people who feel burnt out as well. After all, it's not too long until Thanksgiving break.