SHS student reveal how they deal with a packed schedule

Jordan Jones, reporter

Nearly 40 percent of parents say their kids are stressed from school, according to a 2014 poll from CNN. Students are often involved in after-school activities, relationships, grades and the possibility of having a job, all on one schedule.

With balancing cross country and yearbook, junior Heather Blankenbaker says that she just prioritizes to come up with her daily schedule.

“I always put school first rather than track or yearbook,” Blankenbaker said.

For the nights that she has both yearbook and training, Blankenbaker says that she’ll go to both, first going to training and then straight to yearbook. For the nights that she does not have both track and yearbook, she says that she just goes to track and then home to either work on her homework or hang out with her friends.

Blankenbaker says that she works hard to keep her relationships in check. For keeping her relationships healthy, Blankenbaker says that most of her friends take the same classes as her, so on the weekends they’ll get together to do their homework.

“Socially, all my friends take similar classes, so we’ll hang out on the weekends and do homework,” Blankenbaker said.

Despite prioritizing and attempting to make the best use of her time, Blankenbaker says that she still gets stressed out, but that when she does get stressed she just tries to organize her schedule a little more and plan things out.

For Jaylan Puckett there are different things to juggle within his ongoing schedule.

Puckett plays lacrosse, works at White Castle and still manages to get his schoolwork done and spend time with his friends.

Since lacrosse is a spring sport, Puckett says that there has only been practice a few days out of the week up until this past week, when they changed to having practice every day after school.

“I just told them I can only do weekends because we have lacrosse throughout the week,” Puckett said.

Keeping his relationships in check is pretty easy, Puckett says, and he will just spend as much time with his friends as possible and get together whenever he is not busy.

“If I’m off and don’t have practice then I’ll hang out with my friends,” Puckett said.

Puckett also says that it helps that his best friend since first grade, Norsie Martin, works with him and also does lacrosse. So even if Puckett is busy, he’ll still get to hang out with him.