After hours of being on her feet, busily running around town, the Middletown High School honors student finally arrives at her familiar home. She clumsily fumbles with the lock, opening the door. Slowly, she drags herself onto the couch. For what seems like five minutes, she closes her overtired eyes.

Seemingly a few minutes later, she cracks open her crusted eyes. Suddenly, it’s 9 p.m. Oh no! Where has the day gone? She still has hours of homework and has to be up and ready for school in just nine short hours.

Many students have felt like this sometime in their high school career. Helplessness, the feeling that they can’t possibly get finished all that they need to. Here it comes, the dreaded all-nighter.

We ask who is to blame for the prolonged stress in drained teens’ lives. Is it the teachers who give them a ginormous workload? The parents, for putting pressure on them? Or simply the students themselves for dumping pressure on their own shoulders and participating in too many extracurricular undertakings?

Giving homework is a teacher’s job. It’s what they get paid to do. Some students don’t understand that the work, nonetheless exhausting, builds character and responsibility. Admittedly, some teachers do go overboard. With sports, family problems, and SAT tests, there is an abundance of tension on a student’s plate to worry about.

Students are diverse. Even in small town USA, everybody has their own opinions and schedules. While one person doesn’t get home until 10:00 every day, another might get home at 2:30 and have free time all night to do assignments. And teachers can’t play favorites or give some students more work than others. Naturally, they need to give heaps of homework to everyone.

Parents too, can put huge quantities of pressure on their bright young pupils. Because you have to go to college, and get good grades, have fun, but not too much, right? You don’t want to be too prudish around your friends, but if you aren’t principled enough, you’re in the hot seat with your parents.

It’s a constant maze. You have to try to please your parents, while still being happy yourself. We’re like mice, desperate for the cheese, our goals, and our dreams, at the end of the maze.

The worst type of pressure though, comes from within. It’s the burden of having to be better than others, be better than yourself and who you were yesterday.

It’s important to you to have good grades, a social life, and at least a few hours of sleep a night. In high school, it can be challenging for people to balance all of the aspects of their life.

At the end of the day nonetheless, students try their best. They put in the effort, some just in altered ways.

Remembering the loads of homework she still has to, the girl rolls off the couch and begins to study.

Irritated at whatever her pre-calculus teacher threw at her today, she must recall why she has so much heaviness on her back. It instills in her that she must be the best version of herself, and deal with the “real world” pressures.

Sluggishly she finishes her work and packs it neatly into her overused bag. Feeling just the smallest ounce of pressure lifted from her back, she sinks into bed to capture the few hours of night she still has left.