When we were little kids (before we were all grown up and boring), we absolutely hated sleep. All we wanted to do was run around outside, scream and yell. Going to bed before nine seemed like a chore.

   Fast forward a decade; and, well, it still is. Personally, I can only recall falling asleep in school about two or three times. One of these times was in eighth grade, while we had a substitute. It was a pretty decent nap. Those thirty minutes felt like a better sleep than the five hours I got the night before.

    Sometimes, the seven alarms you set for ten minutes before your bus arrives don’t wake you up. But of course despite all this, you’re always wide awake when it is actually time go to sleep. At that age, I was still young enough to actually feel somewhat guilty for falling asleep and missing our super valuable curriculum, but I had more to accomplish later in school.

    The other two times that I fell asleep in class were in my junior year of high school, during the same class, in the same week. I had added another complete worksheet to the endless abyss that is my binder (no dividers, mind you) before putting my head down and closing my eyes to rest them.

   If you ask me, we need to bring naptime back from kindergarten. I think it’s a hidden talent that students have, to be able to fall asleep no matter how loud the teacher that no one listens to usually is. It’s another talent to doze off so much that you convince yourself you aren’t paying attention. But the ultimate talent of them all is to be half-asleep and still finish most of your work and get a passing grade.

It’s not our fault that school starts so early. The system hasn’t seen a significant change in about fifty years. Nowadays, we don’t even have the attention span to sit in a building for seven hours or more per day and regurgitate information. Personally, I’d prefer to have classes centered around an ideal career and work life.

None of this can be controlled too much by a teacher, so it’s not their fault. It’s really the fault of no one at this point. The system sees a handful of younger students doing well and assume that this system works for everybody. But as a junior in high school, I’ve quite honestly lost motivation.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my first semester. But there’s nothing wrong with that, considering I finished both quarters with at least a 3.0 GPA which is considerably higher than the 1.5-2.0 average that I had my first two years of high school. Moral of the story is, only sleep in class if you can really handle it. Don’t fail.