Disclaimer: This is based on the author’s personal experience and may not apply to all public schools everywhere.
Today’s extremely informational guide covers how to properly ace public school. Yessir, you read that correctly. As someone who grew up going to public school, I have ample qualifications to ensure your success should you ever choose to join the dark side.
The first and most practical step is to find the most competitive school in your district, preferably one like mine where everyone knows which college they are going to at nine years old. I remember having classmates who were taking AP exams in eighth grade. I, for one, would not recommend that path simply because most eighth graders have not learned enough in terms of knowledge and maturity to take a college level exam. In fact, most eighth graders are dipping their toes or full on swimming in the gleaming waters of the Procrasti Nation. Let me tell you, citizens of Procrasti have it doubly hard on the AP exams.
At any rate, once you’ve chosen your school it’s time to check out the bell schedule. Generally, classes start at 8:30 in the morning and run until around 3 p.m. Each class, or period, lasts for about fifty-four minutes in high school. You generally have a six minute break between classes and one thirty-five minute break for lunch. Some people take more than six classes, so they have a seventh period after school, which means their school day goes all the way until 4. To be honest, the schedule is not so bad once you’ve figured out where your classes are. Most of the time teachers hang around outside during the first week of school because of all the lost freshmen who end up wandering around helplessly.
Hypothetically, it’s the end of the school day, and you’re at home ready to start your homework…or not. Most likely the first thing you want to do is collapse somewhere and do nothing for an indefinite amount of time while pretending you don’t have six assignments and two tests the next day. Unlike homeschoolers, public school students have daily homework and oftentimes will end up with several tests and projects from different classes all due in the same week or even on the same day. It’s a lot more pressure, but somehow the procrastinators seem to thrive just as well. Well, maybe not quite. There’s a lot of talk that goes something like this: “I stayed up until (insert ungodly hour of the night) a.m. finishing (insert assignment(s)).” To be honest, we homeschoolers probably do the same thing with our homework, just about six to seven hours earlier because we don’t have to go to a physical building for school.
I will say that in high school the teachers tend to let students do their own thing more than middle school and elementary school especially. Sometimes, the lower grades almost seem like prisons the way they come up with so many rules. For instance, high school students can go off campus during lunch but students in lower grades are not allowed to go off campus. This is really not a huge deal because it’s pretty much only the juniors and seniors who go out because everyone younger cannot drive. Another rule that is generally not enforced would be dress code. At least in my old high school, sometimes people would wear rather questionable clothing and not receive any sort of consequence. Crop tops were super popular and probably still are, although honestly I don’t understand why anyone would want to wear half a shirt. On the other end of the spectrum, baggy clothes were in fashion as well – and I always find it amusing when someone wears a tight little crop top with these super oversized sweatpants. It’s just ridiculous. There are a lot more random written and unspoken rules which are followed (or not) in amusing fashions, but to go through all that in one article would very likely take hundreds of pages.
As you may or may not have realized, this guide has only covered the very bare bones of public school life-the skeleton if you will. I haven’t even touched the social life of public school, but I will save that as part two of this guide! Please let me know in the comments below how this guide worked and send in requests for more.
Photo Credit: This is actually a photo of the high school I went to. It’s from Wikipedia. Please don’t stalk me.