🥐AJ :
The new schedule starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 5:00 p.m. That’s almost 10 hours a day in school. We used to have a bit of breathing room, but now recess is only 10 minutes. Ten minutes to eat, use the restroom, stretch, talk to a friend, and get ready for the next subject. By the time you sit down with your food, the bell rings again. Most of us end up eating standing up or skipping it altogether.
And then there’s the new grading system with three terms. On paper, it sounds like it spreads the pressure out. In reality, it feels like there’s never a break. The moment you finish one term, you’re already behind on the next. Projects, quizzes, performance tasks — they stack up without pause. There’s no “we made it through” moment anymore. Just “what’s next?”
The hardest part isn’t even the work. It’s the pressure we put on ourselves. We see classmates catching up faster, getting higher scores, finishing tasks earlier. So we stay up later. We tell ourselves, *just one more hour*, then it turns into two, then three. Some of us are only sleeping four or five hours. We come to school tired, sit through the whole day, and go home still thinking about what we didn’t finish.
Lolo always told us to stick together and not leave anyone behind. But right now, it feels like we’re all running alone, trying not to fall. We’re not asking for things to be easy. We just want a little space to breathe — time to actually understand what we’re learning instead of just rushing to pass it.
If the goal is to make us better students, maybe the answer isn’t longer hours or shorter breaks. Maybe it’s giving us time to think, to rest, to be kids and students at the same time. A 10-minute recess can’t reset a brain that’s been on for 10 hours. And three terms can’t measure learning if we’re too exhausted to absorb it.
I still want to do well. I still want honors. But I don’t want to lose myself just to get there.
2026-06-14 07:39:17