The Optimist

Carson Otter

Opinion Editor

The toughest day of school is always the first. You have to wake up earlier than you did all summer long, you have to go and listen to teachers tell you the same thing in all five periods. They give you a syllabus and a form for your parents to sign. Then they give you a list of rules that after two weeks the teachers will have completely forgotten about. The first day is always rough, but for some reason I thought I was ready for it. I was thinking that since it would be my fourth year I would be braced and ready for it, but for the first time in my life I was wrong.

It all started by having to wake up at seven in the morning, which during the summer was rarer for me than a confederate flag at a Lil’ Wayne concert. Being the nice big brother that I am, I took my little sister to Batchelor only to find a new series of stop signs that would force me to actually stop and let little kids going through puberty cross the road safely. The way to prepare the middle schoolers for the big bad high school is to let them cross the street and because they will never learn, just like the IU students who seem to keep getting hit.

Once my sister was safely at school I decided to head to Bloomington High School South, only to find a line of traffic on Walnut that backed all the way up to K9 Companions. To my knowledge the entire line of the traffic was heading to South. It was like each freshman had their moms, dads, grandparents, and neighbors cousins all drive to drop them off. I think it was possible that someone hired Richardson Photography Studio to take pictures of them walking in the beautiful glass doors in the front of the school. When I finally got to the South parking lot I was pressing for time, so I tried to speed up in order to get to class on time. Once I sped up I had the pleasure of slamming on the brakes because right in front of Scarlet (my car), I saw a series of speed bumps. The speed bumps are more pointless than SRT after first period. When students don’t want to go over them, we just decide to drive around them in the grass.

After I finally parked and got to school I had the pleasure of sitting in my SRT that had moved for the third time in my four years at South. My new teacher, Mr. Farrar, started the year off on a great foot. After passing out the same papers I have filled out all four years at South he led us in leadership activities, and trust building exercises. As we left the classroom he gave us all a hug and wished us a great senior year. I then proceeded to go to my classes which I am quite fond of. After a couple periods I tried to use a staircase, which was a bad move on my part, because when I tried to exit the staircase I tried walking through a crowd of freshman. Not only were they just standing there, they were so tiny that if I wanted to I could have probably just walked right over a couple of them. They looked like a group of girl scouts standing outside of a Kroger waiting to sell me Thin Mints.

Once I got through the crowd I made it to “C” lunch. After my fun filled day I had quite an appetite built up. The lines were all packed so I decided to get pizza, only to find that they replaced the Dominoes’ pizza with Papa Johns. However this doesn’t affect me too much because I don’t like to get pizza daily because they mark it up so high. It was when I went to get my normal red Powerade was when I about lost it. Each day that I have been at South I have gotten a red Powerade for lunch, and on the first day of my senior year I was forced to pick between sugared up Gatorade or Vitamin Water. I was pretty upset to say the least, but I figured that a good cookie would make up for it, but on that day, and almost every day in “C” lunch since, they ran out of cookies.

The day went on and somehow managed to end, but for some reason almost every day since it has been the same way. It’s time to finally live up to the hype of the recent presidential election and make some changes. There should be less driving problems, better food in lunches, and freshmen should grow and learn how to walk. If these problems are resolved we might be looking at a great year, but if we neglect these problems and continue to be careless they might come back around and scare us like a late period.