School Has Begun...

High school is brutal. The teachers are brutal, the hallways are brutal (especially stairwell 3 in the 300 wing between first and second period at Green Hope), but most of all, the workload is brutal. I mean, sure, if you aren't an academically oriented person, your homework is going to be significantly less. But here I am, sitting in from of my computer with 7 textbooks for 5 classes on my left, two open notebooks between my keyboard and the monitor, and a mad mental search going for my calculator.

Various experts give various times for how much sleep we really need, but most of the numbers fall in a range of 8 to 10 hours. Last year, this was occasionally achievable; school started at 8:00, so when I went to bed at 11 or 12, I'd get around 8 hours of sleep. This year, my high school has conformed with other schools in our area by starting school 35 minutes earlier. For me, this means adjusting from getting up between 7:15 and 7:35, to sleeping in all summer, to waking at 6:00, hitting snooze, and waking again at 6:15 in order to be on time to class.

No one high schooler I know sleeps more than 8 hours a night. Many of my friends are like me: countless AP's, countless extracurricular activities. Our lives move so quickly that we practically have our personal contrails. Lunchtime consists of a few minutes of eating, then studying, going to tutorial sessions (Green Hope has something called a smart lunch), or attending/organizing/preparing club meetings.

Sometimes, the reality of how much you're taking on doesn't hit you immediately. My friends and I, we were nonchalant and cool with having such an intense workload, even excited. Now three weeks into school, we're all getting bags under our eyes and complaining ceaselessly about our lack of lives and lack of sleep, of not perfect grades, of dissatisfaction. Last weekend, I was filling out a form for a commitment at my local library. One of the requests was to list your extracurricular activities and commitments. I wrote mine down, came back two minutes later with more, and did so again. It's bad when you can't keep track, isn't it?

Yes, yes it is. High school is brutal.