Sacrificing Grades for Mental Health

 Sacrificing Grades for Mental Health

By: Gianangelo Dichio



    Imagine going to bed at 2 AM after 8 hours of YouTube, waking up at 4 AM to do work you were supposed to do the day before, and starting your day at 7 AM…

This was my life in middle and high school. I never did my homework, didn’t get any sleep procrastinating and stressing over the homework I didn’t do, and ended up doing my homework in class.

    Initially, I believed the narrative my teachers, advisors, and parents told me that I was a bad student for not doing my homework was true, which made me feel depressed. 

As much as my elders advised I should do my homework, I could not build up the willpower to do my homework. Why? Because of the internet. Why should I care about what some teacher believes is important if I have the entire base of human knowledge at my fingertips that allows me to decide for myself what is important? 

    So I would spend my afternoons on youtube, playing video games, or reading articles that fascinated me instead of doing homework. All the while, threatening thoughts loomed in my mind; 

    You didn’t do your weekly reading! 
    The essay is due tomorrow! 
    It’s already 9! 10! 12! 2! 
    You didn’t do a single assignment tonight!

So I had to wake up early to complete my homework, or at least try. Off of two hours of sleep, I forced myself awake, and at 4 AM, with no distractions, I was able to write essays and complete assignments… but I was dead in school. With no sleep and assignments completed, I would sleep in every class. Teachers would even slam on my desk to wake me up (you would be surprised to hear how many times this happened to me). 

Because of how detrimental 2 hours of sleep was, I would do my homework in class. I would not pay attention, but at least I wasn’t asleep. 

    One day when mindlessly walking around the gym in Physical education ( a routine we would do for 30 minutes every PE class), I was pondering how I would complete the English assignment due later that day when it hit me!

I knew that I did not care about the assignment, so why was I letting the assignment stress me out or give me anxiety? Why was I letting the assignment take up brain space if I knew that I did not care about it?

    I decided that my homework was better left undone. Homework was causing me so much anxiety and stress in my life that my mental health was much better not doing homework.

    I decided to fix my sleep schedule, instead of procrastinating until 2 AM.
    I decided to pay attention in class, instead of doing my homework.
    And I decided to not get stressed from homework and study what I find interesting.

This resulted in my test grades increasing, and my mental health becoming healthier. Although my test grades were great, I lost many points on homework assignments that I did not do, so my total grades dropped.

    In the end, I sacrificed my grades for mental health. I was able to stop getting stressed over assignments that I knew were unimportant to me and learn about topics that I actually found important.

This is my own story, but it raises issues with the education system. My mental health was heavily affected by assignments that I did not find important. We need to rebuild the education system so that it prioritizes mental health and children’s interests as opposed to forcing specific knowledge that our elders find important on them.

    
The future of our education system should treat children as individuals, not as one out of many in a classroom that must complete the given assignments to pass the class.

Students must want to go to school, a sentiment I have never heard come out of any student’s mouth.

School is the place for learning, and humans innately love to learn and grow. But the current education system takes the idea of learning and constrains it to an industrial work-like environment where students must stay in their seats, do as they are told, and not pursue their own interests ( a very counter-intuitive model for learning).

I believe that by allowing students to pursue their passions with a consistent contribution-based education system instead of a grade-based task completion system, we will be able to prioritize the mental health of children in our education system.

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