When Phoebe Sanders ’17 went to the emergency room of UCLA Medical Center last year for a 104 degree fever, one of her first thoughts was, “I can’t miss school.”
The doctors told Sanders that she had contracted pneumonia. They said that her illness was most likely caused by stress, something Sanders had become very familiar with during her “daunting” sophomore year, she said.
“Back then I’d stay up super late stressing out over little quizzes and trivial things,” Sanders said. “So maybe that’s why I got sick.”
Many students attend school when they’re not feeling well due to concerns about missing class and having to deal with the stress of making up missed work.
When Sanders had pneumonia, she had to miss three weeks of school and was scared about the prospect of making up all her missed work. To her surprise, she found that teachers were very accommodating to her situation. She missed an entire unit in history, she said, and history teacher Dror Yaron let her write an essay on the subject instead of taking the test. However, she notices that when she misses school for shorter time periods, it’s more difficult to catch up since she has less time.…show more content… “I’d rather be at school getting work done than to miss school and have to make it up at home and get notes from someone and be behind.”
Dr. Shakti Soni, a pediatrician at Brentwood Pediatrics, said that she frequently sees students push themselves to attend school despite their sickness and despite her advice to rest during an illness.
“In my practice I often find that it is the students themselves who are resisting their parents requests to stay at home and rest,” Soni said. “They feel the pressure to continue to attend school and keep up with their curriculum so that they can maintain their
