Stretched too thin.

At least once in one’s high school career, there will come a time where everything hits at once. The classes, the job, the responsibilities — it all piles up. There’s too much to do with too little time; deadlines swim through one’s brain; focusing becomes impossible. A million and one things to do, yet only one can be accomplished at a time. A silly system, really.

Stretched too thin.

It’s hard to tell when it’s all too much until you’re living it. It’s not until after you sign up for endless AP courses that you learn you can’t handle it. It’s not until after you’re hired that you realize you don’t have time for a job. It’s not until after you filled your plate to the brim that you realize you can’t even finish half of it.

Stretched too thin.

I am a believer that this isn’t always a bad thing. Yes, it contributes to the already copious amounts of stress in a student’s life and no, teenagers don’t need any more stress than they already have for simply trying to mature. That being said, being stretched too thin can assist high-school students in finding their boundaries and can help them learn from it.

Each person has their own limit; the place where they crack under pressure. In my opinion, it’s better to discover that limit early on.

Finding the pressure point as a young adult will prevent years of painstaking stress. Following this theory, maybe, after one particularly vigorous year, regardless of where it falls on the timeline of high school, a student realizes they cannot repeat what they just did. They know their limit, and they will continue to live under it, filling their plate with only as much as they can eat.

This process doesn’t need to be dragged on for years. It’s painful enough as is, so why stretch it out even longer? Even so, one shouldn’t seek out overcommitment as means of shortening the process — live below the limit for as long as possible. Purposeful pain is still pain, and the longer pain can be avoided, the better.

It’s a grey area, to be frank. There’s no need to go and search for the breaking point if one hasn’t hit it yet, but hitting it could result in never reaching it again.

Stretched too thin.

It’s not always a bad thing, but it’s not a pleasant thing, either. Don’t go searching for the point of no return, but if you stumble upon it, learn from it and never search for it again.

Stretched too thin.