Have you ever realized there’s a minute left to class, so you start to pack your bag ready to go to the next class, but then your teacher tells you to stop packing up because there is “so” much you can write down in the 30 seconds left of class? I don’t know about you, but I’m a very slow writer and I wouldn’t be able to write a sentence in just 30 seconds. Or when they tell you to unpack all of your things and wait for the bell to ring to pack up your things and leave. Or when they make you wait until they’re done with their lecture to let you go, which can sometimes be halfway through the passing period. Sometimes I can hardly make it to my classes in all of the 5 minutes given, and not because I’m talking to friends or socializing.

As an O’Plaine student, I have to go from the third floor to the first and the first to the third floor almost every class period. Maybe I was just very unlucky with where my classes are and when I have them but with all of the hallways and stairwells always being crowded, it takes up almost half of the passing period time. So that leaves you 2 and a half minutes to get to your class right, easy. No, because it also depends on how long it took for you to get to the stairway if you stopped at your locker, and how far away your class is from the stairway. Thankfully I have found the best pathways to my classes, taking the stairways near the back end of the school because fewer people are on those, helping me go up and down the stairs faster. If I am still in the hallway when the music goes off, I think of myself as tardy.

Teachers expect us to be on time for their classes but when we try to pack up a little bit early so we don’t have to use some of our passing period time to pack up, they state that we are, “disrespectful” when most of the time the teacher isn’t talking when we start to pack up, we are normally working on our homework; which would be a disadvantage to us if we packed up early because it would be less time to work on our homework. Yes, if a teacher is talking and you start to pack up and not pay any attention to what they are saying that is disrespectful but making us wait after the bell has rung to teach us a lesson and then we get a tardy in our next class, is not the best fix. Our next teacher, most likely, won’t care why we are tardy unless we have a pass.

All we are asking for is the last 30 seconds of class to pack up.