Being a student is not easy. I found this out the hard way, starting in elementary school when I started getting deadlines and had to start taking notes. As I got older, the academics became more and more difficult. I had to quickly learn what a thesis was and how to write one because my first big essay for a grade was right around the corner. I learned that teachers could be ruthless, but also infinitely more merciful than they had been made out to be in middle school. I began the route to becoming an IB student in freshman year. I was told to take physics and ICAP English, Spanish 2, and all sorts of other classes. I was told this would put me on track to be in the IB program when I was a junior and senior. I had been raised under the pretense that harder was more impressive and important for some far away deadline of college applications, but at the time I thought it would be important for me. I pushed myself and beat myself over the head with bad grades. The bad grades came - well in my eyes they were bad - and I had no way of telling myself that I was doing my best and still doing a good job because of my current situation. Starting high school was a shock because I had never been in such a big school before. If we look ahead into my junior year, suddenly the IB Program was here, with the European spellings and confusing paragraph structures. The IB Program was throwing new acronyms, new assignments, and new teachers in my direction. I was juggling new classes and insanely low amounts of sleep. I began to wonder if it was worth it. I still wonder sometimes if it's worth it, but then I see how much I'm learning and how much I love all my teachers. When I walk into some of my favorite classes I am able to see that I am in a room of scholars and we are led by a teacher who loves their job and loves teaching students like us. The skills I've developed on the road to the IB Program have prepared me well for it, but I am still stressed a lot of the time. New stressors come into play. My friends are concerned about college, about boyfriends or girlfriends, and grades. We are all scrambling to understand this messy chapter of life we are in. I know that we all want to help each other, but it's almost impossible to help someone else when you can't help yourself. I know I have struggled with managing my grades and keeping my chin up. It's not easy to balance both school and social life. Some nights I don't get more than six hours of sleep and other nights I jolt awake at midnight wondering if I submitted a big paper, only to realize that I did. School is not easy and I don't think it ever will, but it is what I love doing. At the end of the day, I love to learn and I love being in a room with other people like me - people who want to learn. I want to continue devouring books I don't always understand with literary features and techniques I had never even realized were possible. I want to continue talking with people who understand more than I do, I love being with other people and learning together. It is such a valuable experience and I know that I want to continue on this path. Despite the stress I feel a lot of the time, I am hopeful. I am optimistic that I will be able to work through the stress, find the cause, and fix it. I will be able to make it through the difficulties presented by school even though some days I am so stressed I want to curl up and hide. In conclusion, I am stressed, but that is okay. It's not ideal to be stressed and I do not want to glorify it, but I know that if I weren't stressed I probably wouldn't care about what I do. Stress is not healthy and to be this worried is not healthy either, but I think that despite it all, some stress is good. Being concerned for your work makes you work harder, pushes you to get up in the morning, and helps you feel the rush of relief and adrenaline when you do well and see your hard work pay off. Learning in a community has helped me to realized how important it is to care for what you do. So many times within a group I work in, I see that students are lost and need help from others and every time it is refreshing to see how eager other students are to help each other. We understand each other and despite the difficulties and severity of the stress, it builds a community that I think helps with the stress.