By Micah Ingram
Every morning, the hallways of The Lovett School look less like a private high school and more like a training camp for infantry soldiers. Students can be seen hunching forward, straining against their North Face backpacks that seem to grow heavier with every passing period.
While it might seem like a normal part of the typical teenage grind, the physical toll is more than just a little pain in the back or neck.
According to the Cleveland Health Clinic, Health experts recommend that a backpack should weigh no more than 10-15% of a student’s total body weight. For example, a 100-pound student means a 15-pound limit.
As students completely bypass their lockers to save time–so much so that they’ve been entirely removed from the alcoves– students are trading long-term spinal health for less stress getting to class on time. This raises the question: Is our current school setup, and our personal preferences, setting us up for a lifetime of back pain?
Intrigued (and slightly terrified) by these stats, I decided to conduct a little scientific research of my own. Now, there’s not much a 9th grader who hasn’t surpassed the science class of Honors Biology can do. But I hauled my backpack onto the bathroom scale, filling it with my normal books, computer, pencil pouch, and notebooks, just like a normal school day, and started weighing it, fully expecting a reasonable number.
Instead, the digital display showed a weight that made me wonder if I had accidentally replaced my normal school books with hard bricks or a small, destructive anvil.
Either the scale was glitching, or I have unknowingly been training for the deadlift olympics (jk). As the numbers climbed, I didn’t just see a weight, but I saw a future filled with a very close relationship with a random chiropractor named Dave.
But here’s what really got me: I’m a freshman. My academic load has just begun. I haven’t even hit the final boss of AP textbooks, three-inch binders, and the mountain of extra work that defines the typical upperclassman experience.
If my spine was already waving the white flag, not even months into high school, what does the future hold for me and my spine?
To see if I was just a weak freshman or if this was a genuine school-wide epidemic, I decided to not only interview a few upperclassmen I happened to cross paths with, but also borrow a scale from Coach Maldonado to weigh some backpacks of students from all grades, to see if I could find some patterns.
We weighed 20 bags. The overall average weight was 16.4 pounds. The grade with the highest average weight was the juniors, at 18.6 pounds. The lowest was the sophomores at 15.4. Some of the highest weights were in the whopping 23-25 pound range. Some of the lowest were in the 9-11 pound range.
I checked in with the statistics teacher, Mr. Battle, who noted that the overall standard deviation was 3.95, indicating a decent amount of distance between each bag and the average weight. But he pointed out that the number would likely come down as more bags were added to the data.
Though the numbers were impressive, I decided to take a step further and interview a few upperclassmen on their thoughts. I wanted to get an insight into how they feel and what their experience is like dealing with these anchors on our backs.
I decided to work my way up the grade ladder, starting with a sophomore, Tatiana Ward.
When asked her to scale the burden, she didn’t hesitate: “It’s a 9 out of 10.” Tatiana explained that she’s constantly lugging around way more than she needs—mostly a mountain of folders and binders.
By the time the final bell rings, her back is in survival mode. Like many of us, she’s abandoned her locker entirely, choosing the daily back pain over the inconvenience of a trip to the hallway.
I then decided to ask junior Heran Tesfaye for her opinion on the matter, and she told me her backpack feels like a “10 out of 10” nearly every day, which is very concerning and can lead to severe back pain.
She pointed out that almost everything in her backpack was necessary for school, and without it, she would be lacking for the day. She expressed how she has been having major back and shoulder pain, weighing her down between classes or when she is trying to hurry. She explained how she is “slowed down so much by my backpack” and that if she dropped it, her speed would increase a lot and she wouldn’t be as much out of breath.
So why not use her locker? Well, she feels like the locker wastes more time because all her classes are spread out across the while highschool.
I decided to check in with our local health experts and headed to the Lovett Health Center. Interestingly, they pointed out how one of the solutions–more digital materials–can actually lead to their own problems. In an email from the Center, they wrote: ”This increases the amount of time spent in front of screens, which is proven to have negative effects on students’ overall wellbeing, headaches, sleep disturbances, neck/back pain, etc.”
And they think that we already have a perfectly viable solution, even if many students choose not to use it. “I think textbook learning is important, and students have plenty of time in between classes to stop by their lockers to swap out textbooks if needed,” they said.
If the current school setup continues, we aren’t just graduating with diplomas—we’re graduating with chronic back issues and a deep-seated resentment for the three-inch binder. It’s a “lose-lose” scenario where the price of being prepared for class is a constant, throbbing reminder on our shoulders.
Until something changes, whether it’s longer passing periods or a shift toward a more digital-friendly backpack or a nostalgic return to locker usage, we’ll keep hunching our way through the hallways like we’re on a permanent expedition.
So, if you see a fellow student leaning forward at a 45-degree angle or gasping for air between the second and third floors, don’t worry. We aren’t in trouble, we’re just Lovett students doing our best to survive the daily heavyweight championship of high school.
