Over the past few months, I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about whether what I\u2019ve been feeling is normal, or if it\u2019s just me being lazy or not disciplined enough. When I started my first year of high school, especially in the first term, I really wanted to do everything right and give my best in everything I was involved in. I had really high expectations for myself and for the work I was doing. I tried to take advantage of everything at once: extracurricular activities, sports, extra study sessions for chemistry and anatomy, and keeping my grades as high as possible.<\/p>\n
But slowly, things started to fall apart. I began missing homework deadlines, feeling tired most of the time, and struggling to find the energy to keep up with everything. At some point, I stopped focusing on learning and started focusing only on getting good grades for tests, just to stay on track. Even then, the work I was producing wasn\u2019t like it used to be. I could feel that I was capable of more, but the pressure kept building, and new tasks kept coming before I could even catch up with the old ones.<\/p>\n
What confused me most was not knowing how to label it. Was I just being lazy? Or was I just overwhelmed by too many expectations at once? I kept comparing myself to how I used to be or to people I know that handle harder things in a way that looks a lot easier or effortless.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I’ve seen on some researches on student stress and overload suggests that feeling overwhelmed, especially in demanding academic environments, is a common experience rather than a personal and academic failure. That made me reflect more on whether I\u2019ve been too harsh on myself or if it was just a lack of responsibility.<\/p>\n
Kazlauskaite, V., Kaler, L. S., Li, Y., Mendenhall, T., Wick, S., & Song, S. (2025). \u201cI Just Feel Overwhelmed\u201d Overall Stress, Course-Related Stress, and Stress Management Among First-Generation and International Students at a Research University. Journal of First-Generation Student Success<\/i>, 5<\/i>(1), 53\u201367. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/26906015.2024.2342453 ( one of the researches I was talking about on the last paragraph )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the past few months, I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about whether what I\u2019ve been feeling is normal, or if it\u2019s just me being lazy or not disciplined enough. When I started my first year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18632,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18631\/revisions\/18632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}