Stop Monkeying Around with the Schedule

It’s hard enough to memorize one time schedule for classes, but now the South Kingstown High School administration has us memorizing three different bell schedules. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday now have three different time arrangements, where last year there were only two.

  Last year’s bells rang at the same time each day, except Wednesday, which was working just fine. In fact, it was perfect. Repetition, as teachers insist, is the key to memorization.

  By the middle of October last year, I had the schedule down pat. I knew when the class would end, how much longer we had until the bell rang, and now each day has a different, more confusing schedule. Monday is the same as Friday, Tuesday is the same as Thursday, and Wednesday is an hour delay. Yeah, it’s hard to remember.

  I heard through the grape vine that administration changed the schedule to “make it easier for the freshmen.” What? How is changing it from almost the same time schedule every day to three different schedules during the week “easier”? It doesn’t make sense to me, and I doubt it ever will.

  I miss the good old days of the simple schedule that stayed the same from day to day. The only day I had to memorize was the hour delayed schedule of Wednesday.

   I want to be able to know what time class ends, especially the ones I’m itching to get out of, rather than constantly looking into the front of my agenda to see when  the bell sounds. It takes time to find the page with the schedule and times on it, which takes away from class time.

  Let me put this in a different context for those who aren’t following:

  A monkey is trapped behind some very fragile bars. His friend on the outside of the cage wants to help the monkey, and some new animals in the cage, escape from behind the bars. The monkey’s friend finds some three inch wide, steel bars and replaces the fragile bars with the steel ones. The monkey’s friend stands back, and says to the monkey and animals trapped behind the bars, “Ok, now you can get out because I’ve just made it easier for you to escape.”

  The bars are like the schedule. The students are the monkey and the monkey’s friend is administration. They think they have made it easier for us to follow the schedule when actually they made it worse.

  I wonder if freshmen, who this whole change was supposed to help, find the schedule easier. I bet most of them would say “no”.

  Change is never a good thing, especially when you finally get used to something. Change is the source of all evil. Just like when Hitler tried to change Europe, which sparked World War Two, by eliminating the Jews. People reacted and Hitler was taken down.

  People respond to change differently, either positively or negatively. In this case, I’ve seen more negative attitude toward the schedule change than positive.

  And another thing about the schedule change, it has made classes on Monday and Friday close to an hour long. Mind you, SKHS used to have only fifty minutes of class time.

  Not too many students enjoy longer classes. Well, maybe some, but definitely not all.

  Passing time has been cut by one minute, from five minutes to a measly four. I know it’s only one minute, but those sixty seconds can be the difference between being on time and being late to class. And some teachers freak out if you are late, even if you’re in ten seconds after the bell rings.

  The schedule has caused more havoc to the students than it has the teachers. Teachers are now more inclined to give a test on Mondays or Fridays because of the hour long classes.

  Everyone hates Mondays, and a test would make it worse. A test on Friday would kill everyone’s weekend because we are all worried about how we did on the test.

  I miss the time of the fifty minute classes and five minute passing period. Longer classes and shorter passing time is too much to deal with in high school.

  This is my last year of high school, and the last thing I want to do is be bothered by something that really has no significance in my life. Some how the revised schedule has made it to the top of my “things that I could live without” list. I’m sure a lot of other students feel the same way.

  And one last endnote, why is advisory half-an-hour when it used to be nearly fourteen minutes? I could answer that, but perhaps another time.