We all know that the month of May is the month of work. It is the month where you're going to have what feels like piles of work. And then once you think you've finished, June exams are here. These exams are placed literally back to back with our summatives. It is constantly one thing after the other. We become flustered and frustrated and stressed out . So, for my summative I have chosen to tackle the problem of high-stress which is related to the way our school curriculum has been structured especially near the end of the year. The target I will be focusing on us, North Toronto's student body.

At the beginning of the year we start off with a low - moderate amount of work. During November and December there is a build up of work which includes tests and exams. After the winter break moderate amounts of work are assigned. Then in May and June the amount of work increases greatly. These two months, May and June are the two months where work is constantly pressed upon us. June exams also cover more units in comparison to the December exams extending how much studying we need. Although, some of the stress and pressure is going to be unavoidable but it can be reduced.
I also asked a student who attends North Toronto and a student who attends Blyth, a semestered school, about their homework. The North Toronto Student says she "[has] at least 2 hours of homework a night if not more" vs. the Blyth student who says, "I usually have around an hour and a half of work sometimes two hours." By comparing these two quotes we can see that this North Toronto student spends more of their time on work in contrast with the Blyth student which likely means they have less stress revolving around school work and more social time. Both of the students also did my survey and the Blyth student rated her stress rate as a 7 while the North Toronto rated hers as a 9.
I did a survey and these are some of my results. The first pie chart shows the people who have rated their stress level. 87% of the students have rated their stress level somewhere between 6 - 10 which I have labelled as high stress while only 13% rated their stress level between 1-5 which I labelled as low stress. My second pie chart indicates that the majority of North Toronto experience stress due to the amount of school work given during this time. My last pie chart shows those with high stress and whether the amount of work they have effects their amount of sleep. 69% of them said yes and the amount of sleep each of them gets is a range between 5 - 7 hours. While 100% of those with a low level of stress do not lose any sleep and all have less than five exams.
From a psychological point of view most of us lose sleep due to staying up late to work or study. This means we are reducing our amount of REM sleep. We learned in class the importance of REM sleep, for it is essential for our physical health and not enough of it can lead us to getting sick, possibly death as it compromises the immune system. It also effects our mental health, as we are more tired and less focused we are not as productive when doing school work, leading us to once again stay up late, creating a cycle. Lazarus' theory says that it is much more difficult to cope with stress when it is something we have little control over. Us as students have no control over the amount of work we get and our school curriculum, as it is in the hands of our teacher's and TDSB. However an effective technique to cope with stress involves altering the source of stress. We won't be able to change the amount of work we are assigned or the school curriculum but we can change the way it is structured.
A lot of us around this time do not have a lot of time for social interaction. Many of us have said, "I can't. I have, so much work to do," where we cancel or turn down plans, miss family outings, even miss school. This causes us to push away our agents of socialization (friends, family, peers) to focus on our academics. According to