High School is a difficult time for anyone. It's your precursor to college, and you have to start thinking about your future. On top of all of the stress that school alone impresses, there are so many other thinks as well. Many adults don't understand the struggles that teenagers face everyday. Between school, homework, and extracurricular activities, it's amazing that teens find time to hang out with friends, or even the time to sleep! Along with that, you can't forget the drama that we deal with every day. High School is a hard time for teens and most adults don't seem to understand.

Time management and organization, two things that as teens, we hear a lot. Adults don't understand how much we have going on in a given day. Consider this, on average a teacher will assign around 30-45 minutes of homework per class. Now, if you have six classes, that is three to four and a half hours of homework. To go along with this, many students are in extracurricular activities. If your school day ends around three, then you have a two to three hour practice, and do your homework afterwards, it is already eight to ten o'clock at night. On average, a teenager is supposed to get around nine hours of sleep per night, which means that you should go to bed at nine o'clock in order to get up at six o'clock. As you can already see, this is isn't really reasonable. How are you supposed to have a social life when your day is already packed? What happens when a teacher assigned an extra assignment or project? Many teens are overloaded with work and aren't getting the sleep they need. This is just one of the many problems high school students face.

One of the biggest things that students face is fitting in. Just about everyone wants to be in the "in" crowd and everyone wants to have a close group of friends. To many teenagers lose sight of who they really are in order to fit in. Saying that you have to change who you are in order to fit in is like saying you have to eat in order to sleep, there is little to no correlation. The sad thing is many teens are so blinded by fitting in that they don't even see that they are changing. We have all heard it, "be who you are, don't try to be someone else." It's not that easy though. Society tennis us that we need the newest clothes and hairstyles, and that you need "cool" friends. Sometimes it's hard to remember that that kind of stuff isn't the stuff that really matters.

Of course fitting in is a big problem, but what about the people? Teachers and other students can make or break your high school experience. One word, drama, would it even be high school without it? Everyone goes through it and no one likes it. It is easily one of the worst parts of high school . If no one likes it then why is it always there? Everyone wants to know the latest gossip and until this goes away, drama will almost always follow the gossip. In high school, everyone is different, so for everyone to get along with all of these personalities seems like it would be impossible. It's amazing that somehow it works, well... sort of works. Cliques and stereotypes keep students separated which leads to more problems and more drama.

High school has many problems and they probably won't be solved any time soon. For now, all we can do is try to take care of ourselves. Time management, drama, and fitting in barely scrape the surface of the problems that high schoolers face every day. I don't know about you, but for me, on an average night, I am up until at least 10:30 before I finish my homework. High school is stressful enough, we don't need all of this extra stress as well. Teens go through so much every day. It is so overwhelming just to think about it. When I even just think about school it stresses me out. High school is difficult, but one step at a time, we all get through it. With good friends by our side, we can get through it. We are all trying to find our path for our life and along the way we will face busy schedules, drama and will probably struggle with fitting in, but that is a part of life. Some day in the future we will look back on high school and laugh, hopefully.