Preuss is a rigorous school, causing students to feel pressured to do well. Students often feel exhausted from so much homework and long school days. Preuss students have more school days in one year compared to other schools, affecting students to experience stress, feel overwhelmed, and lack a personal life. Additionally, staff members and faculty also have lots of work.  A day off for mental health would be very beneficial to the entire Preuss community. 

Every student has eight classes. Usually, most of these classes hand out homework that will take up around one to two hours to finish. High school students, specifically, may have a lot more work to do because of their AP classes, which causes students to experience stress from an overload of work. 

Furthermore, everyone has long school days, but Preuss school days feel longer. Why? The majority of the students here take public transportation. Many of us take around one to two hours to get to school through public transportation. This, then, makes students have to wake up earlier, to leave their homes early, to be able to get to school on time. 

Personally, I wake up at 6:30 am to have around an hour to get ready. I leave my house around 7:20 and walk to my bus stop to be able to get to school at 8:30. Most students I know tend to have a similar morning schedule to get to school. 

Unfortunately, many students also have to take the same public transportation back home as well, making us get home between 5:00 or 5:30 pm. Getting home this late gives us around four hours to do what we want or need to do. Some students even stay after school until 5:00 or 6:00 for clubs or sports, causing them to get home even later. 

With one or two hours of time to finish school work, we usually only have two hours of free time. This may lead to students getting no social or personal time. Students having no social life, could cause students to have loss of identity or depression from having the same routine over and over again. The National Institutes of Health tells us, “Social isolation leads to higher levels of cortisol and worse cognitive development.” They also tell us that lack of social interaction can lead to anxiety and depression in adolescents. 

These symptoms also apply to staff. Many of Preuss’ staff stay after school for tutoring or grading work while most of them have families and other things to do as well. Multiple members of our Preuss staff are also a bit on the older side; they must get overwhelmed from teaching and grading around 100 students a day. 

So what can we do about this and how can we get Preuss to give us mental health days off? We as students could request this mental health day to staff members that have been at Preuss for a while now or to ASB. For example, Mr. Carr is the advisor for  ASB, which in 2021, created what was known as “Serenity Day.” Serenity Day occurred  during the pandemic and provided different activities for students to engage in fun breakout rooms instead of having a normal Zoom class day. This could occur, but in person. Teachers could host different activities. Students will continue to go to their classes, but instead of work they could have board games, movie day, coloring, walking to the price center, or playing outside. 

In addition, we could make this mental health day happen by requesting it to admin. We could ask for one Monday off of September, October, March, and May. These months are good for a mental health day because we either only have one or no days off in these months. May in particular is a stressful month for school. Students are trying to get their grades up, preparing for finals, trying to finish off the year strong, and high schoolers are taking their AP tests. AP testing is very stressful for students. Making a day like Serenity Day would especially be helpful during May.

Are there any other ways we could get this to happen? Send your thoughts!