Boredom Defeats Students

by Jordan Costolo ’25

As the school year comes to an end, students have run out of things to do to pass the time during class. Teachers have run out of material (and busy work) to give, leaving most students high and dry in the way of entertaining themselves. With oneweek of school still remaining, this has students scrambling to try and find things to do.

“We’ve all gotten bored of watching TikTok videos on our phones; everyone has been doing that for the past nine months,” said junior John Shnap. “We’ve tried everything: doodling, origami, and Brice even brought in a football. That was fun for a while, until our Chemistry teacher got mad at us for breaking test tubes.”

Without assignments, students have nothing to talk about. Without a consistent amount of work to complain about, students have resorted to whining about other issues such as the economic state of the world and political affairs at the state level. “Yeah, ever since we stopped getting worksheets in government class, we’ve started discussing the state legislative elections in November,” explained sophomore Jenna Abrams. “I feel like the Republican supermajority in Mississippi could be in jeopardy come next election cycle.”

Even classic ways to pass time have gotten to be too much work. “They were satisfied with playing hangman for a while,” reported Chuck Engle, a member of building services responsible for clearing white boards at the end of the day. “But when they ran out of words they knew, they used dictionaries and thesauruses to find new words to use.”

Taking walks is another approach that students now take in order to keep entertained. “Just taking walks around the school, I’ve dropped 10 pounds!” bragged freshman Mike Mann, who claims that the unexpected exercise is helping him get in shape for football next year.

Teachers have stopped bothering with lesson plans, leading to a noticeable uptick in teachers taking more days off from school each week. “The English teacher I’m subbing for usually leaves some pretty detailed notes on what to do,” explained Jim Woods, a frequent substitute teacher at Sherwood. “But the most recent instruction from her only said, ‘take attendance if you feel like it and let the kids do whatever.’”