Imagine going home knowing you have a ton of homework due the next day, as well as tests to study for. That sounds bad enough, but if you have extracurricular activities to do that day, the stress adds up. The time you will need to complete your school work is reduced, and once you finish your extracurricular activities, you will have less energy to complete your studies. I told you all to imagine this in your head, but most of you don't have to. That's because you probably experience it almost daily, every day after school. Have you ever wondered why we go to bed so late and why some of our teachers don't? Have you ever thought about the stress we all experience, compared to the stress our educators experience? Has it ever occurred to you how high everyone's expectations are and why our mentors don't have to live up to them? I'm sure at least one of these has crossed your mind many times before. Students of our generation are expected to face far too much stress for our age; so much so that we may even work harder than our teachers! Honorable judges, professors and fellow students, with all due respect, today I will prove exactly why we students work harder than our professors. First, let's take a look at what a student's after-school schedule might look like. We're expected to be well-rounded, right? This means we must have good grades in school, be healthy, fit, musical, artistic, and involved in the community. If we try to fit these expectations into our already busy schedule by playing sports or learning a musical instrument after school, then a lot of our homework and study time is used up. Students find themselves...... middle of paper...... iatric patient in the early 1950s? It is truly alarming that if we were this stressed about our schoolwork about sixty years ago, we would have been considered mentally insane. The mere fact that we could be accepted as psychiatric patients in the early 1950s is more than enough to show that we work much harder than our educators. Adding in our expected quest to become whole and learning considerably more difficult things each year further proves this. Students lose a lot of the sleep we need because of the amount of work and studying we have to do. Our entire lives are devoted to preparing for exams and completing homework, without having time for anything other than homework. They say your high school years will be the best years of your life, but how can we have the best years of our lives when we spend them working harder than our own teachers ??