It is weird to think about elementary school now that I’m a junior in high school. Since I took the teacher education class here at West, I don’t think there is anywhere else I would rather be. Every morning when I go to my second grade class, I become very jealous.

I”m beginning to miss the time when the hardest problem in math was an addition problem where you had to borrow. The time when the homework of the night consisted of a worksheet that only had spelling and math questions. Back then I had free time because my homework didn’t consume my whole evening. I miss the time when learning was something I was excited for.

I’m not sure if it is our heavy homework loads, jobs, or home life that is the problem, but I see a huge number of students being eaten away by stress and lack of sleep. I think the main issue most students have is balancing every aspect of their life evenly. I mean come on, I think it would be more beneficial for me to learn time management than the velocity of a spring after being stretched two meters.

I also believe that a student’s inability to manage their time has been misconceived as procrastination. Most of the time when I have done an assignment at the last minute it wasn’t because I chose to put it off, but I didn’t have any other time to complete it.

Second graders are the luckiest people in the world in my book. They have the free time to enjoy the life us high schoolers forget we had or could have. If only I could go back to second grade… or learn to manage my time a little better.