Going Back to School

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives. We hope you can use their post to start a conversation with your adolescent.


School is starting again which can be extremely anxiety-inducing for many teenagers. I know it is for me at least especially since it is my senior year and I have to apply to colleges. When returning to school, you see many people whom you haven’t seen for three months which may make you feel like they are judging you and, especially in high school, you get a ton of homework almost immediately. I have a few strategies that help me reduce my anxiety in school.

One thing I have found extremely helpful was finding a few friends whom I trust extremely well and also suffer from anxiety. All of us prefer quieter environments, so to avoid the yelling in the cafeterias, we all eat lunch in one of our teacher’s classrooms whom we also trust and has known us for three years. She is there for us to talk to about our problems or anything that is going on in our lives and has been really helpful whenever any of us has been feeling overwhelmed.

Another thing I have found helpful is asking the teachers of some of my work-intensive classes to tell me what homework we will have for the whole week either the Friday before the week starts or on Monday. This helps me to make a plan as to when I will do the homework and be aware in advance of the amount of work I will have. This helps me stop myself from procrastinating for as long which results in me being too overwhelmed by the end of the week.

I hope this helps other people and I would love to hear other people’s methods of reducing their anxiety during school!


How do or did you handle anxiety in high school? Do you have any advice about applying that to anxiety during college? Have you shared this advice with your child?

Leave a Reply