By Aili Arnell
<[email protected]>

While I was searching for a topic to discuss in an article in U.S. History the other day, I noticed a considerable amount of students beginning to doze off while our teacher was lecturing, myself included. It wasn’t because the topic was boring but was because the day before I had to work a five and a half hour shift after school. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job at Petland, but after a full day of school, that was a little much. After class, I had to sprint down the trail to get to club soccer practice in time, and then after that, I had CDC soccer practice. I didn’t get home until about nine. It was just exhausting thinking about how much I had to accomplish by the end of the day. I realized at that point I had way too much on my plate. Between school, work and soccer, something had to give. I then came to the conclusion that the other people that were falling asleep were probably in the same boat. I saw an Ambassador, a rugby player and several other active people with their heads on their desks slowly drifting to sleep. 

Young adults have way too much going on in their lives today. Of course, school work is always supposed to be the number one priority, but in a world where the more extracurricular activities you have the better chance you have to get into the college you want, it is easy to get wrapped up in everything the CHS and Carmel community as a whole has to offer. As a freshman, I was on the freshman soccer team, in Key Club, Best Buddies, Invisible Children and in House. With soccer practice everyday after school as well as games throughout the week, it was hard to get all of my schoolwork done as well as participate in the other activities. Since then, I have cut back on what I’m involved in, but I still struggle to gain free time. I have soccer three days a week, work 24 hours per week, and school every weekday. 

With the new establishment of the distinguished graduate program here, overachievers are spreading themselves extremely thin to appeal more to prestigious colleges. This new program rewards the quantity of activities the student is involved in rather than rewarding quality of activities. There has to be a change in the lives of teens today because not everyone has time to submerge themselves in a dozen or so activities.

Teenagers need to remember what they are-kids-and realize they’re only going to be young once and to use that to their advantage.