It has been proven that the stress level of students today is equal, if not more, than the average asylum patient in the 1950s. Yet now it’s not because we use lead in gas or because we use hazardous ingredients in medicine. It’s simply the daily struggle to be “good enough” that drives us mad. The standards and costs of education rise exponentially every year, and thus we push ourselves harder. But there is a limit to the human perseverance that was crossed long ago.

The first threshold, crossed in middle school, would be how long teenagers can survive without adequate sleep. Despite the fact that teenagers need nine hours of sleep a night, we are given so much homework that we can hope for at least five. We get so much homework that we give up on social lives and on our mental health. As we pay more attention to our work than ourselves, panic attacks, depression, caffeine consumption, headaches, migraines, anything detrimental to our health is dealt with on a daily basis.

The system is focused on teaching us how to pass tests to keep our grades up. GPA and grades have become more important than learning itself, be it practical, analytical or philosophical, because colleges care about GPA. If you can pay attention during hour-long classes, despite the normal attention span being around 30 or so minutes, you have a good chance of passing the test.

As a senior in high school looking back, I can tell you one thing, we need to uproot the current system and start from scratch. Make classes shorter or require teachers to give small breaks throughout their lectures so we can stay attention. Weight grades more leniently so a 90 on a test doesn’t somehow pull our grade down and we can actually focus on what we’re learning. Limit the amount of homework each class can give. Reverse the idea that making mistakes and tutoring make one stupid and allow us to try learning again and again. Get rid of flipped classrooms and allow teachers and students to interact in a lecture atmosphere. Instead of us dreading every day of school, let us look forward to it.