A/N: This was origninally an article I typed up for my school's newspaper. GO JOURNALISM! Anyways, it didn't make the paper but I thought I'd share it with you anyways. Some of the material was edited so it would refrence to James K. Polk.
The alarm clock goes off on your nightstand for the fourth time. Praise the inventor of the snooze button! Glancing at it, you realize its 6:30 am. Grudgingly, you rush to find whatever clothes you have that are clean. Going for the I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-but-I-would've-looked-a-lot-nicer-if –I didn't-have-to-get-up-at-this-ungodly-hour look, you slip on your favorite sweatshirt, matching sweatpants, and sneakers. No time for breakfast. Despite health advisors continually nagging about how breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you simply ignore it. Will eating a bagel really improve your chances of passing your test if you haven't even studied? Outside, the bus rumbles loudly as it passes your driveway. Cursing to yourself, you have to now ask for a ride to school. And most likely you'll be late due to the fact it takes a miracle just to get your parents up at this hour too. Thankfully, you arrive at James K. Polk without any problems. Now all that remains is getting into the traffic circle without killing yourself (or fellow students) because it's so congested with cars. Yet despite the fact that you have a 50/50 chance of getting hit by a motor vehicle, you take your sweet time slowly closing the car door and waltzing up to the school. Much to your dismay, the bell rings loudly, signaling that first period has begun.
"Get to class!" the hall monitors snap, trying to break up tight-knit groups of students. Reluctantly, you go up to the office to receive a pass. When you finally receive the pink slip of paper, they mark your tardiness unexcused. That's another thing; unless your parent has a certified note by the President of the United States giving a dramatic and gruesome reason why you are late, you're pretty much marked in the computer as a delinquent absentee. Now you have to walk to your locker. Conveniently, it is all the way down by Gordy's janitorial closet while your class is upstairs. You would've been able to use your backpack but thanks to Vice Principal Crubbs, that's not allowed.
"You're late," the teacher snaps as you enter the class fifteen minutes later. She continues to rant about how if they can get up early, pay taxes, and install TiVo than surely you could arrive to school on time. Just your luck the class happens to be English, the one class you can't stand. Even worse, you're reading Shakespeare today. Why people are even interested in reading epic plays where all the main characters die in the end is a real mystery to you. In addition, if a majority of the American population speaks English, then why do you learn it? You spend the rest of the time unsuccessfully trying to snooze in class. Thankfully, the bell rings and you can chat with your friends. Not for long, though. You practically need a cattle prod to move through the hallway just to get down to your next class: Math.
While plodding through the problems on the board, you vaguely wonder why you have to learn it. Will you really need to make a box-and-whisker graph to buy a pair of jeans? Will you need to figure out if a square is a parallelogram but NOT a rhombus if you're buying a concert ticket? Most likely not, yet you're required to learn it anyways. The announcements come on and you hastily scribble the assignment in your planner before heading to gym. Yet again, you have failed for the sixth time to bring your gym clothes. Unfortunately, you have to participate anyways because it's the Presidential Fitness test. Why would the President even care about how many sit-ups you can do in a minute when the economy is facing a recession and there's war overseas?
Next on your schedule is Earth Science. Feeling like Joe from Blue's Clues as you take out your "handy dandy reference table," you could care less as your teacher forces you to pass around a rock for the entire period.
However, the bell rings for your favorite period of the day: Lunch. The one opportunity during school where you can actually relax. As you approach the cafeteria though, hundreds of students are crammed into the serving area, screaming like banshees. That's right; it's Taco/Nacho day, the one day where most of the school actually orders the main lunch. No wonder the school mascot is a Wolf; you have to claw and fight your way through the crowd just to get to the cash register.
After eating, the bell rings for sixth period. Much to your dismay, it's History. As your teacher lectures you about things that have happened from 5 B.C. to 2008, you feel like you're brain is going to explode. Why even bother learning about things in the past? They've happened, there's nothing anyone can do about it, so you might as well move on.
Relieved when you're finally allowed to leave, you skip merrily down to your Elective class. Even better, the teacher is nice, your friends are in it, and it's actually a class you enjoy. But all good things must come to an end, and that's what goes through your mind as you head down to Foreign Language, you can't help but wonder why you have to learn it. For instance, you can only use the preterit when you're talking about something that has happened to you, but only if it's a cloudy day in Mexico. However, you can use the conditional tense any time you want between the hours of 6 am-5 pm in the Eastern Time Zone. As the bell rings at the end of the day, you hop down to the busses like a sugar-high kangaroo. Once you get home you can relax, procrastinate on your homework. Even better yet, don't do it at all, and go to bed until you have to repeat the cycle once again.