Some say high school is like a pressure cooker. In 2019, many high schoolers are under an immense amount of stress.

Many high schoolers must juggle both their school work and a job and struggle to find a balance in their schedules.

The journal Frontiers in Psychology recently published a study among 128 students, staff, and administrators regarding students’ stress levels. The study found that 49 percent of students experience “a great deal of stress” on a daily basis. While another 26 percent state that they have been diagnosed with depression, which is four times higher than the national average.

Junior Savannah Lyon, a student at McHenry West Campus said, “Even the thought of going to work stresses me… and I feel like a screw up when I don’t get my homework done. The two go hand-in-hand.”

Counselors and social workers see first-hand how stressed students can be, especially when they are trying to manage both school and work, like Lyon.

“Juniors and seniors in high school are under more stress than a majority of the other students,”  said West Campus social worker Katie Murtaugh.“I’ve personally seen an increase in students’ struggle… [and] students who can’t manage their stress levels.”

The student services staff are working on providing students with tools and strategies to combat this stress.

“This is one of the biggest issues that we try to help kids with: staying organized and time management,” said Sarah Sadler, one of the counselors at West Campus.

Some of these strategies are simple, such as making individual folders and notebooks for each class to keep materials separate and organized. Other methods include developing routines for tracking deadlines, downloading useful apps like The Homework App, and ranking tasks from highest to lowest priority.