Students at Greeley West are always saying that they’re tired. Most parents, teachers, and adults in general would say that this is because teens create bad habits. Although this may be true, and phone addictions and laziness is rampant, so are busy schedules and high expectations.

Many students’ days start at 6-7am, and don’t end until 8-10pm. Their days are made up of many different components, and not just sitting around all day, which adults think we do. 

During the school day, our brains are being continuously pumped with knowledge that we’re supposedly going to use in the future. As many things as possible are crammed into an hour and a half, and if we don’t finish an assignment, it’s homework. Things get stacked up, homework from unfinished classwork, and real assigned homework, which can get hard to finish when we have lives outside of school that can’t wait. 

Sports practice, 5 days a week from 4-6pm becomes repetitive and physically and mentally exhausting. Getting home after doing physical activities for 2 hours straight and having to complete your nightly routine, and homework on top of that creates less and less hours of sleep. 

Some students also have jobs that their time is dedicated towards after school and over the weekend. School is supposed to prepare us for the future, but so does a part-time job. Whether it’s to build up savings for college, a car, to help with household expenses, or to learn skills in the workplace. No student has a job for no reason. A job, on top of school can be exhausting for anyone, especially a teen with growing responsibilities. 

“Just go to bed earlier” isn’t as realistic or easy as it is to be said. It is fair to say that teens have problems with procrastination and phone addictions, but this happens alongside real stress, and heavy workloads. It can’t just be simplified into laziness.