By Isha M., Elena B., Grade 9
Negley, Keith. “Stress Can Make You Sick. Take Steps to Reduce It.” The New York
Times, 8 Oct. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/well/mind/
stress-can-make-you-sick-take-steps-to-reduce-it.html. Accessed 24 Nov.
2022.
In-text citation: (Negley)
The perspectives differ on how stress overload from the personal project can affect students.
Over the summer, the grade 10 students worked on their Personal Projects. Students say stress from the project impacts them in negative ways like: interfering with their personal life as well as their mental health.
“Schoolwork, I think… they put too much workload on us at once, and we don’t have time to balance everything, so eventually everything’s going to fall apart,” Kanika S., Grade 10 said.
Kanika S., who had recently been a part of the project, said that it was very stressful to balancing schoolwork, the project and personal life. As a result, she felt rushed for most of it which led her project not being organised and leaving her less happy with the outcome.
Kanika struggled with managing her time on the project and she said wished that she had spent more time throughout her summer holidays on it, as she would have finished the project with less stress. She then had to spend all her time on the project during the school year which put her behind on schoolwork. Kanika S. also struggled with staying organised and keeping on track with her action plan which was another cause for falling behind with time.
“If you haven’t done the product, then you obviously haven’t finished your report, and that’s going to cause you to rush everything,” Kanika S. said. “So that’s stressful, and not good for your mental health.”
Personal Project Coordinator Mr. Lee takes care of introducing the project, compiles resources, provides workshops and trains supervisors. Mr. Lee said the project is not built to be stressful.
“It definitely does bring stress like any other additional project would,” Lee said. “But I think that’s just the nature of any of these projects and I think in order to reduce the stress students have to stick to their own deadlines.”
Mr. Lee said the project is manageable for students as long as they stick to their own action plans they made before starting the project.
However, he does agree that there is a large work load in MIS (especially in the senior school). Despite this, he considers the Personal Project to be such a long-term piece of work that it shouldn’t over burden the students.
“It is structured in the way that the stress/work level is manageable,” Lee said.