Almost no one enjoys going to school. It starts early, it drags on and leaves you exhausted by the time you get home….but you still have homework to do. School wasn’t always such a monotonous experience; in elementary school, it was actually enjoyable. So what changed?

When you were younger, going to school was exciting. The first day was a happy experience: you got to see your friends again and start learning new things. In elementary school, everyone cared about you. There was always someone there to make sure you understood the topic you were learning. Teachers put in an extra effort to make class interesting, to really engage the students in their education. Whether it was because they thought we had short attention spans or were just dedicated to making learning fun, it worked.

In elementary school, learning was exciting. Personally, I was excited to gain knowledge in all the new topics introduced. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my mom everything I had learned that day. Others agree.

“When I went to CBS,” senior Ayesha Asif recalls, “I found school fun. Even though we were learning, it wasn’t boring.” So when do the tides turn? When does school go from fun to laborious? The answer: High School.

In high school, teachers seemed to start to care about students less and less. I’m not saying they’re bad people, but they just don’t have the time to care. Their objective is to cram as much information into our heads as possible before our ponderous slate of exams. Students are left worn out from the mountains of work they have to do in school and at home.

“I wish I had the chance to enjoy what I was learning,” says BHS senior Samreen Mohammed. “But in high school, it is less about enjoyment and more about memorizing for a test.”

The pressure on students today is much higher than it ever has been. One study on a government website showed that the average teenager has the same levels of stress and anxiety as those experienced by psych-ward patients in 1950s mental asylums. We all feel like if we aren’t getting the best grades, we aren’t good enough. But if we don’t take hard classes, we didn’t try hard enough. So, we’re stuck between wanting good grades and wanting to stand out. The fact that school is completely boring now just adds insult to injury.

Maybe students wouldn’t dread waking up in the morning if they had something to look forward to. Maybe students would enjoy learning if every teacher tried to make it a fun experience. And maybe, just maybe, making school more interesting would open up a world of loving to learn. That spark of interest is what we need to succeed.

But, you know, I’m just a kid, so what do I know?