To me, there’s something fundamentally wrong with the fact that I have to greet my friends with a “good morning” as I eat lunch. Yes, that’s right: lunch. At 9:40 in the morning.

Before I elaborate on how weak I feel by six pm, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that I’m a very lazy teenager that enjoys the benefits of two simple joys in life: sleep and food. Now, during the summer, I covet reaping the benefit of such sleep until, say, at least ten am on a daily basis. Let’s keep in mind that now, being in school, I am not only awake much earlier than my preferred ETA(estimated time of awakening) but have already devoured my lunch before the clock strikes 9:50.

Now, I acknowledge that a student in seventh period lunch reserves just as much of a right to complain as I do because their lunch is so late in the day– but I have been in those shoes as well! As a student that is committed to a musical ensemble, club or other extracurricular activity every day after school during the week, the absence of my true love of eating for literally eight hours goes very noticed. By seventh period my empty stomach makes focusing in class a very difficult task. A student in seventh period lunch may have to wait longer during the day to eat their lunch but with the school’s offering of a free breakfast I think they have a much more spread-out diet without any additional money spent, and a late lunch also bodes well for fuel through after-school activities.

You’re probably wondering why I’m wasting my time complaining when I could either buy more food at lunch or go to the vending machines. Be assured, those are measures I do take to avoid falling over with hunger by the end of the day, but they literally come at a cost– oh yeah, money is one of my other loves! Admittedly, I use hunger as a very relative term– we’ve all heard the “there are children starving in other parts of the world,” speech, so I won’t pound that into your brain yet again– know that I have a deep respect for anyone who has ever dealt with true hunger.

I understand that it’s impossible to accommodate every student’s preference for when and if they have a lunch period, but I find it unfortunate that some students, because they happen to have their lunch at a more traditional time of the day, eat a more spread-out and well-balanced diet. And while I could have a lot more to complain about in high school, I do think this arbitrary advantage makes a difference in testing, overall production in school and motivation to keep coming back every day.

I suppose I’m just a whiny student– but hey, I think I can see the sun starting to rise so I guess I’d better get to lunch.