For some TCS students, academic pressure does not end when the school day does; it can follow them into the dreams they have at night. Julia Ocampo, a dedicated and straight-A senior at TCS, mentions that schoolwork appears in her dreams: “I’ve actually noticed that sometimes I dream I’m doing homework or I’m doing a long project in my dream.” Those school-related dreams can become more than a passing image when academic stress begins affecting how students actually rest and function. Ocampo recalled, “For example, when I was in 10th grade in AP Seminar, I remember doing the essay many times. I ended up not being productive at all because I stressed in my sleep, and I did not get enough sleep, and I wasn’t actually doing anything, so it was not great for me.”

Her experience also shows that the problem can begin before students even fall asleep, especially when a demanding workload pushes schoolwork late into the night. Ocampo explained, “When I was in 10th grade, I was in 4 AP’s; I was in Seminar, Spanish, Pre-calc, and Human. I felt a lot of academic stress, and it felt like I didn’t get enough sleep because I was staying up until very, very late completing the work for each of those classes.”

Julia connects academic pressure to workload and lost sleep, while Violeta Gallon, also a 12th-grade TCS student, shows that the same pressure can take a more emotional form, turning academic fears into disturbing dreams. Gallon said, “Absolutely. When I have a really hard quiz, a really hard test, or I’m in a really hard class, I have a lot of nightmares, not only related to my homework or related to school, but nightmares overall. I get, for example, a lot of sleep paralysis, so that is really hard to deal with, and I get really, really anxious in my sleep.” For Violeta, those nighttime experiences are closely connected to what she fears might happen if she does not meet academic expectations. She recalled, “For example, one time I was studying until late for a calculus exam or for a pre-calculus exam, and when I was sleeping I began to dream a lot about how I would fail the test, how my parents would get angry at me because I failed the test, how I was going to be a failure.”

That fear does not disappear once the dream ends; repeated interruptions can make the actual amount and quality of sleep suffer as well. Gallon explained, “It’s mostly the nightmares. I tend to fall asleep really easily, but I have a lot of nightmares, which makes me wake up in the night a lot of times, and which makes me not get enough sleep or the sleep that I need.”

While Julia and Violeta describe academic stress from the perspective of current students, Martin Yepes, a former TCS student who now attends EIA University, adds another layer: school is only one part of a larger routine that can make rest difficult. Yepes said, “The thing I’ve most noticed is difficulty waking up and falling asleep. I am a person that thinks that it’s very difficult to fall asleep because you are always on screens, and then you just sit there thinking a lot of time what you just saw, and then waking up because it’s almost like a vicious cycle.” Difficulty sleeping can therefore become more complicated when students are balancing several responsibilities at once. Yepes added, “I do think that for some students it is affecting the ability to properly rest, especially for the people that have other extracurriculars outside of school.”

Even with those additional pressures, his own experience shows how strongly unfinished school responsibilities can remain present after students are supposed to be asleep. Yepes remembers, “Yes, I had a dream that I didn’t turn in something in, and it made me check.”

These experiences suggest that academic pressure does not always stay within the classroom. For some TCS students, it can follow them into the night, affecting their dreams, interrupting their sleep, and making it difficult to fully disconnect from school. What happens during the day can continue long after students close their books and their computers, showing how deeply academic pressure can reach into their lives.