The traditional “How are you?” greeting is abandoned in the Maasai culture in favor of a greeting that more accurately represents their community. Emphasis is placed on the wellbeing of the children — of the future. If the children are thriving, the community is thriving. And so, they ask: “How are the children?”

How are our children? Stressed. Overworked, unrested. Generally speaking, we’re exhausted.

And why shouldn’t we be? We’ve had a wild few years. Yes, so has everyone, but ours has been heightened by our lack of prior long-term memory. Long-term memory storage kicks in around seven years old, and the eldest of us students are 17 or 18. This means we’ve had about 10 years of memory stored — most of which we forget instantly — and the pandemic has raged for over two years now (two years on March 14th!). Do some math, and we realize that the pandemic takes up 20% of our long-term memory.

And that figure is amplified the younger you are — our young freshman, still 14 years old, have almost 30% of their long-term memory overrun by COVID-19. By contrast, 40 to 50-year-olds will have between 5.4% and 4.25% of their long-term memory interlaced with COVID. 95% of their memory — completely normal.

No wonder it’s difficult for adults to understand the strain we’ve been under. This is a blip in their lives: it’s become ours. It’s unfathomable to adults to understand what a major event this is for us. Twenty percent of their long-term memory would be Obama’s presidency. Twenty percent for us? The COVID pandemic.

Now that we’re no longer hybrid, adults can jump back into “everyday life.” But at our age, “everyday life” changes every year, so much so that normalcy isn’t a term we really understand. If we’re really supposed to go back to the last “normal” year of school we had, I should really be back in 3rd grade. So, this normal isn’t “normal"; it’s another “new normal” that we’re struggling to adjust to. Sure, it’s easier, being with friends and talking during class, but somehow, we have three extra days in school, and we still move at the speed of sound. It’s so much, all at once.

All of this is worsened by the burden of expectations. Unintentional expectations, but expectations just the same. We should be able to go back to normal. We should be able to regard the pandemic as a blip in the past — and I’m sure, someday far in the future, we will — but now? Masks and social distancing are all we know. And all these things take a toll on everyone’s mental health: distancing yourself from your close relationships so you don’t get sick has the unintended consequence of ruining these relationships. I felt like I sat so far away that it was uncomfortable to speak last year. I didn’t talk. I’m a quiet student, generally, but I’m never silent – if we had a class together last year, you’d never know that.

On another note, there is some expectation that when someone’s grades are good, their mental health is good. Let’s be clear: the two variables are not linearly related. In an observational study on mental health and GPA, where GPA was measured on a
100-point scale, and mental health was self-reported on a scale of 1-10, I found an R-value of -0.51. For those of you not in
AP Stats, the R-value tells you how closely the two variables — mental health and GPA — are related. With an R-value of -0.51, we know that GPA and mental health are only somewhat correlated — if there’s any correlation, it’s a negative relationship between the two. Students with lower GPA values generally recorded a better mental health state.

There is such an emphasis on having a good GPA and getting strong test scores, and such little importance placed on coming to school in a good mental state. People come to school exhausted: while the majority (approximately 40%) said they were able to get an average of 8 hours of sleep per night, another 40% averaged 5.5 hours of sleep a night. To us, it appears as though the message is sent out that a 98 on a test is more important than getting a good night’s sleep beforehand. I’ve seen this in action: me, my sister, and my brother have all stayed up past midnight to cram for a test (that we generally do poorly on, since we were ready to fall asleep mid-2nd period).

The importance placed on being a well-rounded, smart individual is so extreme that we do not acknowledge the part that’ll
stay with us past college: our minds. We must take care of ourselves. We don’t get to get rid of ourselves. We’re stuck with us. It’s certainly a much more impressive demographic to say that the school has a 98% graduation rate and an AP enrollment rate of 50%. There’s a 1 out of 2 chance that you, yes you, reading this, are in at least one AP class. But what’s the purpose of being in an AP class if it stresses you out? If it exhausts you? If it confuses you? If we’re amid a pandemic and you need stability, why would you pick up harder classes? This isn’t criticism: I’ve done it too. But why?

I don’t know.

It seems the school — the community — wants to come across as perfect. But we’re not. We have flaws. Everyone does. What are we supposed to do? Yes, the children are not well. And what? It seems futile, but there are actions we can take. We can normalize mental health days — it’s okay to take a day to yourself (with permission from your family, of course) and destress. Avoid last-minute work and get things done early — this sucks, but it helps you in the future. The most important thing is to advocate for yourself! Go to your teachers and request a small extension to finish a paper or project. Not everyone will say yes, but it never hurts to ask and lift a weight from your shoulders.

What should we ask of adults? It’s certainly unreasonable to put our entire mental health on authority, but we should be able to ask for help sometimes. Find an adult in your life whom you trust — a parent, grandparent, tutor, coach — and make time to talk with them. This will strengthen your relationships, inherently improving your mental health, and will give you a chance to talk about what you’ve been going through. While you’re there, take a minute to ask about what they’ve been struggling with, too.

We have to acknowledge that although our experience in the COVID-19 pandemic has been amplified, we aren’t the only ones in the world. Every single person is going through this together. And being isolated can deteriorate anyone’s mental health — not just children. But it’s hard to remember this when no one talks about it.

Several students said that they wished mental health became a normalized discussion topic. It’s such a taboo subject, discussing depression and social anxiety, among other things. But it’s not an uncommon experience: depression affects 1 in 10 people in any given year, and as for social anxiety? Being around twice as many people is enough to make any introvert feel claustrophobic. They’re more integrated into our community than we realize.

My school has introduced WIN days, but many students still don't know what WIN days are. WIN: What I Need. Clever, right? On these days, students are given an X block schedule where teachers can hold classes. These classes range from fun, low-stress activities to study halls and added learning periods. I remember attending a WIN Day where we learned how to write a DBQ, and another where we did some meditative coloring. They’re fun. You’ll love it.

How are the children? We’re struggling. But we’re working at it.

If we want our community to improve — help the children get well — it can’t be done alone. Each community is not just the
students, not just the teachers, not just the administration. It’s all of us.

We need to come together. This is a challenging time, and now more than before, we need support. Students need support, and a community can’t be STRONG without a foundation: a resilient student body.

We need to be well before we can be STRONG. And someday soon, we hope to be able to shout from the rooftops: Our children are well.