35 hour school weeks are standard in the U.S. but that is just the start. 

   Yes, students go to school five days a week, for seven hours a day but the school work flows over into after-school hours and weekends. Schools preach the importance of extracurriculars and to nurture the relationships in your life, but I question how we are supposed to devote enough time to those activities if when it comes time for those we have already drained all of our energy in school? 

   To think that this cycle of school starts when you are only five or six years old and continues depending on your path after high school until most are 22 or 23, just prolongs the exhaustion. Human nature can endure many things. Survive threatening injuries, push through mental challenges, and many more, but the school system seems to not be one of them. Especially for teenagers, whose lives are in a pivotal moment in relationships, school and the daunt of future plans. While it may be thought that the predictable five-day school week could be a good constant in some lives, it can also have the opposite effect. The never changing pattern of the same thing every day can put students in a place to not care. I have personally seen it in many friends and in myself.  The concept of “senioritis” seems to occur earlier these days than in the past. The piles of school work that overwhelm students do the opposite of the urge to learn but instead creates a sense of student fatigue.