__________________________________________________________________ Collective Voice: How much stress is too much? Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Saskatoon StarPhoenix 12.11.2016 Collective Voice: How much stress is too much? Paige (for Saskatoon StarPhoenix Collective Voice December 2016) -- columns run each Monday in The Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Stress seems to be everywhere when you’re a teen. Balancing school, homework, jobs, friends and family and extracurricular activities can get a little overwhelming. It’s hard to find that balance of school life and home life. It may seem impossible, and stress tends to come into play before you can find that balance. Especially with teens, stress almost takes over our lives before we can get things under control. As a high school student, how much is too much? It’s proven that stress from school can result in lower grades, a lower attendance record, and even learning difficulties. If you deal with long term stress in Grade 9, it will usually cause your later years in life to include declining academic achievements throughout Grades 10 to 12 and even later on. -- homework time, which could result in unfinished homework. Homework is definitely not the only thing we could be stressed about. Even the demands of everyday life can be stressful. Being somewhere at a certain time or having a test in class could be the most stressful thing ever for some people. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but to others it feels like their life revolves around that one thing they had to do that day. Sometimes it seems like the stress never ends and the workload keeps getting bigger and bigger, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I think that homework forms a big part of teens’ stress issues. Teachers will usually not give enough time to finish an assignment and that tends to make us feel rushed, and like we don’t have time to finish the assignment as well as it could have been done. We know we could have done better, but we didn’t have time — the other homework needed to be done, too, and if we had taken more time the stress level would have just gone up, in order to finish the other homework. How do we eliminate stress? It’s simple: we can’t completely get rid of it, but there are some ways to manage stress. You could try talking about your problems with others, start setting smaller goals, breaking tasks into manageable chunks and making time for breaks and enjoyable -- We have to know our limit and how much is too much. It’s not healthy to be constantly stressed out; we just have to take things one step at a time and not worry about what tomorrow will bring. -- (BUTTON) xShare Collective Voice: How much stress is too much? ____________________