William Iven via Pixabay

High school is hard. There is no point in denying this. Trying to juggle school work, jobs, sports, clubs, extracurriculars, and God knows what else isn’t an easy task. With all these activities, students stretch themselves too thin, resulting in high stress, little sleep and mediocre grades. Many kids have to cycle through this process every single day—however, there are students who have found a loophole when it comes to getting all their school work done: skipping school altogether. Yes, I understand how crazy this sounds. When picturing a kid skipping school, most imagine some hooligan teen just doing it to smoke dope and eat fast food with their buddies. In reality, there are many high-achieving students who skip school in order to work on school. These students believe that if they are able to structure their time when they skip to finish what they need to do, instead of going to easy classes with minimal workload, then they can catch up more easily.

If students are lucky enough, their parents will even help them out by calling the school to say their children are sick. An anonymous senior explains how her father helped her out: “My college deadline was coming up soon and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to start my application because I had so much to do in and out of school. So I figured out a day where I had virtually nothing going on in my classes and got my dad’s permission. It was extremely helpful for me to just be able to take a day off from school without having to worry about anything else.” Skipping school to work on college applications seems to be a common theme among seniors. They figure since they don’t have much work to do in their classes, they can skip and work on something they believe they wouldn’t have time for otherwise. Teachers, however, have a different opinion.

William Myatt, teacher at Pleasant Valley High school, believes skipping school in order to work is never justified. “Even if you’re watching a movie in class, there’s still a reason you’re watching that movie. You will always have enough time to get schoolwork done. Students who don’t utilize this time are the ones who have to skip school in order to get ahead.” Many students who have skipped school to do homework would disagree, arguing that if they’re not using their time to work on something productive, which is how they spend most of their time, they’re using it to be with friends or do something that makes them happy. This is completely justified, especially when the mental health of teenagers is so fragile. If students continuously spend time doing work that stresses them out and don’t take a break, they will become overwhelmed. Taking time to do things that make you happy is something everyone should make a priority. With this in mind, skipping school in order to have that extra time doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Unless we can take school days off without having to worry about having an excused absence students will continue to take of school.