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Grade 9: Psychology and Coping with High School Mentally Lecture

September 10, 2018

Grade 9: Psychology and Coping with High School Mentally Lecture

Stress, exhaustion, getting friend-zoned, buying frozen coffee at Lawson’s, – some things you can’t have a high school experience without. In Thursday’s 6th period Academy lesson, all those issues and more were addressed by Mr. Pardy, one of the TA in SHSID, in a talk about coping with the issues surrounding entry into high school. All students benefited a lot from it.

Mr. Pardy began his talk by presenting a survey with data taken from 172 of last year’s freshmen, about the key issues students faced and how worried they were about them. According to his data, 57% of students were concerned about dealing with depression in high school, while 53% said that they had issues with coping with stress – just to name a few figures. He then proceeded to tackle the various issues that had come up in the survey as key concerns for students, such as stress, relationship issues, and depression.

Relationships are certainly a hard thing to deal with normally – the added burden of schoolwork and how to get ready for college applications, as well as various extracurricular activities, certainly compounds the difficulty of dating. Mr. Pardy’s take on high school romance is that students should focus on themselves as a growing person with their own interests in mind, not “as a good boyfriend or girlfriend.” Mr. Pardy points out that they are there for a reason – dating distracts you from more important things and being freshmen, and we’re simply not quite ready for it yet.

For many of us, talking to our own parents is a scary experience – one misstep or slip of the tongue can lead to admonishment or punishment. Throughout his speech, Mr. Pardy gives students several pointers on how we can better communicate with others, particularly parents or teachers. A world with seven billion humans certainly doesn’t revolve around one individual or another – and Mr. Pardy encourages students to consider other viewpoints or perspectives while in an argument or talking to someone. Another tip he gives students is not to have confirmation bias – try to consider all pieces of evidence and all situations while dealing with an argument, not just the examples that favour your side. Additionally, he encourages students to consider the effects our actions might have on the feelings or emotions of others before taking an action or saying something – being considerate is definitely a key skill in day-to-day communication.

Finally, Mr. Pardy delves into the issues of stress and depression during the last minutes of his presentation. Stress is a natural thing to experience when facing a challenge or task – not being stressed often leads to more trivial treatment of a task or event. However, too much stress does have adverse effects such as burnout or impacting your outlook on life negatively. To cope with stress, physical activity or just tackling the root cause of one’s stress are often good measures to take. Depression can also be an effect of stress – and being overly depressed can often lead to self-harm or one having harmful thoughts. For those situations, Mr. Pardy urges students to seek help from either an adult or a school counsellor – hiding one’s emotions or trying to cope can often only worsen the situation.

Thank you Mr. Pardy for the very informative talk, and we’ll be having the Academy again next Thursday.

(Written by 9(10) Calvin Pan Pictures by XieJunyu Supervised by XieJunyu)