STATS AND FACTS

the teams won’t end until 8 p.m. rather than the average 6 p.m. end time. Field hockey travels up to three hours for their games, so losing the open block seven will make travel plans a much more arduous process.

Although this change negatively affects stick sport athletes, members of the schedule planning team felt the bullet had to be bit in order to solve a much more pressing issue facing much of the student population: intense end of day burnout. The sheer exhaustion students expe- rience in a block seven class can be connected to the student body overfilling their schedules. The administration makes an effort to prevent students from taking seven classes and a directed study, but the competitive edge that some feel by taking one more AP or deciding that because they are taking a greater number of classes, they are in a better place than their peers, makes the burnout worth the grind for many students. The new schedule will prevent burnout in the same class every day, but if students continue the pattern of overfilling their days, the result will be one unproductive block per cycle for every class. What students fail to realize is that the sheer amount of classes in their schedule can take away from the overall quality of performance in those classes as evidenced by problems with block seven. Being a successful student at the school cannot be measured by how many boxes one fills in on the three year plan sheet, but how one uses the resources given to them by the institution to make those three years as valuable as they can be. Taking six classes can be infinitely more enriching than seven if the extra block allows a student with intense extracurriculars to get homework done during the day and have a better chance for dinner with the family instead of in their rooms or even a more full night of sleep. A larger problem needs to be addressed if students are incapable of engaging in a lesson during the early afternoon, and that is the issue of feeling the need to fill boxes at the expense of a quality learning experience.