schoolyard subversion

2000-09-13 [< * >]

School is taking a terrible toll on me. I come home from school tired, sleepy and about to collapse. This is both a combination of the physical work and the mental work. I don't know how much longer I can take it. I feel as if I am almost about to collapse.

Physically, we are forced to march up flights and flights of stairs to reach any class. Our lockers are in the basement and most of our classes are on the third or fourth floors of the school. This gets tiring quickly, but is made even worse by the lack of passing time between classes. When one class ends, the next class starts immediately. Thus, you are almost always late. To deal with this, one would likely assume the best solution would be to keep all the work you needed in your backpack and carry it with you to all your classes. Alas, this is not possible either. Our backpacks and textbooks are so heavy that attempting to do this creates such a terrible strain on my shoulders that I have difficulty sleeping at night.

Emotionally, things are sometimes even worse. We are mentally bombarded with an onslaught of classes (due to the peculiarities of our schedule, many of them exceptionally long) which are mindnumbingly boring and painful. Then, as if this weren't enough, the teachers "kindly" assign hours and hours of homework to the poor students. This necessitates carrying the heavy books home, as well as around school.

It wouldn't be so bad if one could simply come home and do one's homework, and be done with it. Unfortunately however, freshmen are required to take a fall sport. No, they could not wait and allow you to become adjusted to the difficulties mentioned above. Instead, they take away many hours of your time right from the start. Practices last until 5:30 or later every day, and when we have games, we often do not get back until 7:30 or later.

Between the school days, sports practice, homework, and the immense feeling of tiredness I feel when I get home, I am left with little time to do much else. All this hard work leaves us little time for actual learning, the true purpose of school, if I am not mistaken. Instead, we are subjected to days and days of work. Numerous times, I have seen clever students trying to pull our class time towards an interesting discussion, one which all of us could learn from. Instead, the teachers insist on pulling the class back towards their planned track of work, work and work. How sad.

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