Searching for time:
scavenging for minutes each day ben rUskin a&e chief
Charles Harte
T
staff writer
ick tock, the clock strikes twelve, then one, then two, and so on, and still no free time to be found. High school can be a busy time, and people are not always able to adapt and find time for themselves. When we are younger, free time is taken for granted. Younger children wake up late, come home from school early, and enjoy all the free time they can find (which is a lot). The older students get, the less free time they have during the day. It seems as if it should be the other way around. With the stressful and rigorous courses high schools offer, shouldn’t older kids have more free time to relax their minds? “As I have gotten older, my free time level has decreased. When I do get some time to breathe and relax, almost always I find myself being stressed about future assignments, and then I end my free time and continue to work,” junior Max Weiss said. With the myriad of pressures and stresses that come from daily life, it can be difficult to find free time. A study done by Direct Line Insurance has found that the average human being needs seven hours a day of free time to be happy. This much time can be hard to find for a significant amount of people, as there is school to attend and other clubs and organizations to be a part of. Attaining seven hours of free time is nearly impossible, unless you choose not to sleep at night. “Each day I would say I have about thirty minutes of free time, between soccer, school, and other organizations that I am a part of. I would never be able to find seven
hours,” sophomore Josh Rosen said. There are still other ways to win free time back in your busy schedule. Some people have found that going through their workload, determining what is most important, and deciding what can be done on a later date is the most effective method. “When I get home from school I go through all of my assignments and check to see which ones are the assignments that are urgent and need to be done as soon as possible. This allows me to find a lot more free time during the day,” sophomore Drew Schneider said. Many people find that their only free time is on the weekends, and even then there are a lot of different activities to choose from. “Most of the free time I can find
is on the weekends, and I normally spend that time with friends or family. I wish I had more time during the week so that I would be able to relax,” sophomore Sydney Klein said. According to a report written by Future Foundation, 47 percent of time spent with loved ones is also spent using social media. If some people were to cut back a little bit on social media, it would most likely free up their schedule. Even though it may seem as if you never have any free time, do not panic. Sometimes just taking a deep breath and listening to some music for a couple minutes is all you need to relax and continue your work. Free time is scarce, but how it is spent is up to that individual.
Image by Ben Ruskin