by Sophia Caporale
Everyone experiences stress, whether it be from work, bills, or even now for many people, school work. In the Vail school district all seniors are required to do the Senior Exit Project, commonly called among students SEP. The SEP, in a nutshell, is to get students to have a working adult mentor them so the students can get job experience. Yet this has its downsides, many students find it hard to reach the fast approaching deadlines, and sadly at least one student a year isn’t able to handle this much stress.
Along with the SEP many students still receive large amounts of homework, making it even harder to stay on track of the project but still getting work turned in on time. Many teachers in my own experience seem to never care whether or not the regular work on top of SEP is too much. The main response was just to manage my time better, or that I just needed to get the work done if I wanted the grade. I still firmly believe that the current SEP format on top of the normal class curriculums is too much. Yet at home it can also be an extremely stressful time for some students making school life on top of it worse.
For the students who are stressed at home, school and getting out of the house is supposed to be their escape, not another place where they feel completely overwhelmed. Even though some new changes have been implemented into the SEP to help lower student stress levels, it hasn’t changed the work to work ratio between class work and SEP.
