by Steven Palmer ’13

Dear MCPS leaders who are against making school start later,

First of all, thank you. You are the extraordinary minds that knock aside the over-caring parents and the whiny students. You are the revolutionaries who know that an attempt to make high school start later is even more ridiculous than efforts to put healthy food in the cafeterias, or to get bad teachers fired.

You are the real thinkers. You think with your mind, not with some cockamamie crap called “science.” I bring up this important and impressive trait of yours because the first thing these crybabies say is, “Science says that giving kids one more hour of sleep can increase their SAT scores, better their moods, and improve attendance!” What a ridiculous statement. They think just because it’s been tested and replicated thousands of times across the country, with the results constantly proving the exact same point, it’s like, a fact or something. It’s not a fact, it’s just science, and why should we start listening to science? We’ve never done it in the past!

We saw that science was trying to mess with our lives dozens of times before. There was “global warming,” AKA a completely normal and astoundingly fast rise in the Earth’s temperature. There was evolution, AKA a funny fairy tale about how somehow people grew out of a lizard, or something. There have even been studies that were pro-preventative healthcare, which was science telling us that it is good to see a doctor more in order to get sick less. Why would you want to see a doctor more if you want to be sick less? Doctors are for when you are sick, so seeing one even more just means you’re getting sick more often.

The point I’m trying to make here is to keep doing what you’re doing. Keep saying “Screw sleep!” and rubbing your eyes proudly in the direction of those wimps who want school to start later. Thank you for not dreaming of solutions to problems, but simply focusing hard enough on them until they hopefully go away.

Love,

A Proud to Be Sleepy Student