Dear grades, thanks for causing daily finger biting, toe-tapping, sleepless nights full of stress. I owe it all to you for all the vigorous all-nighters I pulled just to keep you content. My mental well being might not be at its best but at least you’re happy.

In an average student’s life, grades are everything. Good grades are how you get into college, it’s often how a person defines their intelligence, or a way to please your parents. Whatever the reason is, grades seem to play too big of a role in the beginning of our adolescent lives.

A normal day for a student goes something like this.

Your obnoxious alarm goes off at the crack of dawn and you hit the snooze button a couple of times. When you finally decide to get up you feel as if you had only closed your eyes for five minutes and now you are forced to get up again and start the whole cycle over again. You go to school for eight hours barely able to keep your eyes open because you stayed up till three working on your US history project the night before. You get home and if you have work or any other extracurricular then your day becomes even longer. After work you finally are home but you are faced with a chem test you still have to study for, two algebra worksheets, and an essay to write for ELA. You finally get to bed at two and in the morning you get to wake up and repeat the same stressful day all over again.

Students are overwhelmed with hours of school and piled with more than enough homework that takes up any free time a person may have left. This causes a lot of stress which can lead to bad mental health.

Every day we are forced to go through the motions of getting an education but are losing our creativity and freedom. We are all going through life on autopilot.

Getting an education is important, but is it more important than a person’s well being?