Why are students expected to sit in classes, focus, and pay attention, for over two hours yet when it comes time to relax, we are expected to be done and ready to get back to work after a short 20 minutes? It is absolutely asinine to give us hard working students such little time to relax our minds.

For what seems like eternity, we sit in class, not learning, just waiting for a bell to ring. All teachers and faculty want to focus on is learning, but in third period when I’ve been sitting so long my tailbone hurts, not much of that is happening. I sit and stare out of a window or try and discreetly text a friend, the very last thing on my mind is the lesson at hand. This is not the fault of teachers, in fact for certain periods of time, many lessons can be intriguing and compelling but even the most interesting lecture ever turns to white noise when all I can think about is counting the minutes to the next bell.

Administration is whole-heartedly at fault for this situation. As a sophomore, I’ve had two years of this now and know it’s not just a freshman year anomaly. To cite a common phrase, I’m sick of tired of being sick and tired. If I have to sit through one more one never-ending, drawn out, boring period of monotony, I will pull my hair out. How is it that students are only able to hold a job for 18 hours a week, but we can come to school and sit for 35 hours a week?

To be frank, it is not fair at all for young restless students to have to sit in class for this long. The world wants us to get our 60 minutes of exercise a day, but how is that possible when we rot away in desks all day? It’s not. The sheer monotony of hearing one teacher talk for sometimes over two hours is enough to leave students just worn out and tired. I for one know that all I want to do when I get home is sleep, which leaves me no time for homework or no desire for my extra curriculars.

Coaches always expect their athletes to perform well at practices directly after school. This is almost an unachieveable feat, because when all you’ve done is vegetate for the last seven hours, with little to no social interaction, there’s no desire to go stress your body. As a swimmer I always am reluctant to hop in the pool after school and swim more than four kilometers, but even the physically monotony of putting your head down and swimming stroke after stroke is better than putting your head down and hearing the constant lecture of your teacher all day.

Administration doesn’t seem to understand the physical needs of students. This is understandable, considering they were in our positions so long ago that dinosaurs still walked the earth, but it needs to be changed. So, I ask you, why do we still stand for this if its unhealthy, toxic to learning, and just a low quality of life?