The school year is always overwhelming. You come home everyday after a headache-inducing day ready to just collapse on your bed and sleep, but you still have to complete hours of homework. Thats not even mentioning the hours put in after school for extracurricular activities; rather they are filled with sweat, tears, or both. Summer is embraced readily by students everywhere, but in reality students can barely use any of their supposed “relaxation time” due to summer assignments, camps and other time consuming activities.

Students in this century are being robbed of their summer and their time to relax.

High school students are put under pressure from their parents, teachers and even their peers. They constantly feel the need to be better, which in some cases is a positive trait. However, this causes some unhealthy competition between classmates and puts students under unbelievable stress. Students are already stretched so thin throughout the year. When summertime rolls around students should be allowed to relax and prepare for next year as they wish. They shouldn’t be pressured by anyone to take what is supposed to be their free time and use it instead of activities they don’t even enjoy.

Summer assignments consume the much needed summer break for students. The concept behind them makes sense, but teachers often assign hours and even days worth of work. A single assignment precursing to the first unit or just reading a book would suffice, but teachers often assign long novels with dialectical journals and annotations or hundreds of questions based off of long readings. These unnecessary assignments stress out students and suck up hours of precious recouping time.

Academic related summer camps or extra classes are often forced upon students by their parents. These camps can last for weeks and are almost as vigorous as school. Some camps are fun and relaxing and can often be a students favorite part of summer. However, academic camps or extra classes are an extra stress that devoids students of their sleep, time and relaxation.

Teachers should assign less homework over the summer and parents should stop pressuring their kids into summer camps and classes they don’t want to  take. Students should be allowed to spend their whole, already short enough, summer without unneeded pressure or stress from summer assignments, academic related summer camps and extra classes.