A Modest Proposal

Preface: In order to understand this post, you must know that this year the administration shortened time between classes to three minutes from the previous four minutes. Its crazy in the halls, seriously!! I had to write a satire paper for Brit Lit, and this is what I came up with.

THREE MINUTES?!? They’re giving us three WHOLE minutes between classes? Such extravagance of time in a school day!! In three minutes one can brush AND floss their teeth. In three minutes one can read a short story. In three minutes one can copy the previous night’s Brit Lit assignment from a friend, or even attempt to do the assignment on one’s own. Why, in three minutes the whole course of HISTORY could change!! If you add up all those minutes, three minutes per day times five days per week times about 36 weeks per school year divided by 60 minutes per hour, you get NINE whole hours per year spent changing classes. Just think, nine HOURS!! I won’t even begin to mention the things one could do with that amount of time.

Now, one may travel the halls of our fair school during one of those afore mentioned three minutes and be surprised at the loud, chaotic nature of the halls. One might note the almost frantic atmosphere and think it due to students in a rush to their next class all the way across the school building. One might even feel a twinge of pity for those tiny 7th graders, seemingly already a bit uneasy in the masses of older students, that are sprawled along the sides of the corridors, books flung everywhere.

All of these scenarios may cause alarm to an uninformed outsider. Let me assure you, however, that all is well. The students who are in such a hurry are merely trying to make use of those three minutes. They get so excited at the vast quantities of time allotted that that go a bit overboard in their enthusiasm, resulting in much unnecessary yelling and flailing about. Those small 7th graders you were worried about? They’re merely playing the newest game, the game of How Many Times I Can Be Run Over Before the Next Class Without Being Tardy. A bit lengthy of a title perhaps, but still becoming more popular by the day. I’ve heard one especially talented youth holds the record at seven. So it can be understood that the fearsome hurricane that erupts when the end of class bell rings is merely a sign of excitement and even school spirit as the rest of the school begins to catch on to the 7th grade game.

An especially cautious and overbearing mother might still not be convinced. She may overreact to the occasional goose-egg on a forehead from the dropped government book or the broken bones from the especially zealous game players. She might even go so far as to suggest that the school administration lengthen the time between classes and encourage a more orderly class changing. This, obviously, is a truly pathetic idea. The worried mother merely needs to be educated about the time lost of breaks were lengthened and about the bonding, one-of-a-kind experience the halls really are.