It’s that time, the very first of many for some.
The young adults of Correlieu and Quesnel Junior School will be tested; quite literally. We are jumping head first into the first exam week of 2018.
I am actually studying the Great Depression and the Second World War while typing this week’s piece. I want to give everyone not currently in high/junior school a look into a week of our lives.
Please don’t get me wrong, we know that you have been here and done this, but school today is perhaps different from what you experienced.
Nearly 30 per cent of students age 16 and 17 hold down a part-time job. That doesn’t sound too awful, does it?
Think about it like this. We work an average of four weekdays, not including weekends, for a three- to five-hour shift.
We need at least an hour in the morning to get ready for school, where we work from 8:30-2:40, five days a week. An hour of travel time spent on the bus, chores at home, meal prep and eating time, plus two hours of assigned homework and studying.
Let’s get started on the after school activities. We have commitments from across the board: job interviews, musical theatre, band, choir, sports, yoga, horseback riding, candy striping, (writing a column), Shaw internships, job shadowing, gymnastics, relationships, competitions, air cadets, dance, and some of us eat, sleep, and study at the rink whether it’s ringette, hockey, or figure skating. Many do a few, and a few do it all.
We need eight to 10 hours of sleep to supply us with energy for the whole day, in order to be healthy individuals, and intellectually engaged in a classroom setting. All of this is what a regular school day looks like.
When exam week rolls around, it is a time to make sacrifices. We can forget about relationships, say good bye to eight blissful hours of rest, competitions are cancelled, horses get bored, rehearsal is skipped, and who really has time to eat anymore?
Those few things that we cannot skip out of, such as work and volunteering, continue to take up precious time. I don’t even think about social media for a good two weeks (although that’s not necessarily abnormal for many of us).
Exams are broken up throughout the week; how many you have per day is in accordance with the classes you take.
If you loaded up on academics, you could have musical rehearsal and English 12 on Monday, Biology 11 on Tuesday, Law 12 on Tuesday afternoon, Pre-Calculus 11 and your Cadet CO’s Parade on Wednesday, and the Numeracy Assessment on Thursday.
The Numeracy Assessment, for your information, goes on our transcript; meaning it will taint our resume and haunt us for the remainder of our lives. Yaaaaaay.
When adults look at us teenagers and see lazy juvenile delinquents, we want to (respectfully) tell you up from down; we are not all like this.
School is different than it used to be; not necessarily harder, just different. We have different social pressures, different opportunities, different commitments, and a different world in which we have grown.
So when kids become stressed, or scatterbrained, or downright short-tempered with life, know that although we don’t do what you do, we still do all that we can. Because that is what this time in our lives is about.
We get to live, make bad choices, grow, and learn all that we can, so that one day, we can do what you do. Be the very best version of ourselves.