By Maddie Karp and Lila Patinkin
Welcome back to school everyone! We’ve finally arrived at our long awaited break from the stresses of summer. Some of us have hopped from Four Seasons to Ritz Carltons around the globe, an extremely tiring and taxing chore. Others (those who chose to “Staycation”) have grown weary of alternating trips from East Bank Club and Saddle and Cycle to Oak Street Beach. But now our nirvana, the blissful routine of an eight day block schedule plus an athletic and/or artistic endeavor of our choice, has arrived–and with it, our perfectly tanned friends.
This summer, as we lounged in places such as the impressive shadow of renowned Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull with no reading material except Starz Magazine, our IQ seemed to drop from that of Harvard graduate Natalie Portman to that of the creator of the number one app this summer, Kim Kardashian. To revive our studious habits, we’ve created a rigid schedule of post-school (any time after 3:20) activities for your perusal:
3:21- Obligatory Starbucks run to reactivate those caffeine/sugar powered cells that reside in the back of your brain, and to catch up with everyone’s favorite barista (baristo?), Nick.
3:30- Anxiously refresh Latin School email to check if your director/coach has given you permission to meet with your teacher after school (Mr. Baer, pls!!!!).
3:40- Go to your scheduled meeting anyway with the justification that missing 30 minutes of practice won’t impact your overall playing time (for all the field hockey ladies, this statement will unfortunately not ring true).
3:45- Interact in awkward small talk with teacher of choice about the weather and summer, purposely avoiding the fact you saw each other in Whole Foods and, after making eye contact, decided not to strike up conversation.
3:55- Hold in tears because you don’t remember how to do simple multiplication (what is 7×8, seriously).
4:20- Haha. Help.
4:30- Arrive at your after-school activity and hope you can jump straight in without running the mile and a half that your team had to endure before you arrived.
6:15- Über/bus home because your parents don’t love you enough to pick you up.
6:30- Feel remorse for the entire sleeve of Oreos you just scarfed down (but it wasn’t that much, so…).
6:35- Somehow read two chapters of your English book in the shower (???????).
6:40-6:50- Check Facebook and end up stalking a graduated senior into their pictures from 2010 until you almost like a photo and slam the computer shut.
7:00- Tell yourself you can finish your homework while watching The Office.
7:03- Realize this is ineffective and put away your homework.
7:10- Dinner with your clueless parents who ask, with good intentions, if you have “hooked up” with a peer to work on a group project.
7:30- Leave dinner because your parents are stressing you out.
7:33- Convince yourself you need to watch an episode of Parks and Recreation as compensation for enduring that meal.
8:04- Realize that you’ve only done half of your homework.
8:05- Clean out your closet.
8:15- Sit down and set your phone timer for 30 minutes in a desperate attempt to motivate yourself.
8:45- Realize you’ve spent half an hour on a french bulldog’s Instagram account (@frenchiebutt).
9:00- Decide to complete your homework between 8:00 and 8:25 AM the next morning.
9:30- “Go to bed” (spend three hours in 5 different group chats with your friends).
We have derived this schedule using thorough research and scientific experiments (utilizing the omni-globe) and have decided that this is the most effective way to wean yourself back onto the metaphorical saddle that is daily life at Latin. Repeat this schedule every day with the exception of days that include “Flex” block, in which case we find it most effective to spend the entire day wondering what Flex block even is.
Be careful out there,
Maddie and Lila
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