This column appeared in the Sept. 26 issue of the Panther’s Tale

Shoved into a room. Heads packed with new information.

Work hard. Expect nothing.

We live on a calendar. Too afraid to fall off a schedule.

We are overworked, as if we are cattle being shoved in a pen.

Wish we could turn back time, to the good ol’ days,
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out.

When we think about our childhood, we remember being home before the street lights turn on  or building forts in our living rooms and believing they were castles.

But today, there’s tears, stress, confusion and exhaustion. We go to sleep at midnight, wake up at 6 a.m. — then we live the same day over and over again.

Study.

Homework.

Practice.

Church.

Work.

We work as hard as we can for a mediocre degree and a job we will have the rest of our lives.

We aren’t taught to live, we are taught to handle so much pressure and stress until we crack and break in pieces.

AP courses are taken in hope that we can amount to something. Clubs are joined so there is at least an attempt at saving our college application. Grades are checked every hour in fear of failing and not recovering.

So what do we do?

I don’t know.

It’s midnight. My alarm goes off six hours from now.

And I start all over again.