No other time of the school day is as questionable as student support. 

Sure, the idea of meeting with teachers or getting some time in to do homework does sound nice and dandy, but you really have to wonder about what the school is thinking when they essentially leave 40 minutes to the honor system. 

Now, I mean no ill will to the responsible among us, who use their support time for good. Sure, they’re massive nerds, but at least I can commend them for being able to concentrate while half the class are having conversations with veritably not indoor voices. 

Of course, not everyone spends their student support chatting. Maybe they sit on their phone for the whole time, contributing to the rise of eye strain headaches as a prominent issue among teens. Maybe they stick to something a little more old fashioned, and just throw things around the classroom. Maybe they enjoy the great outdoors, and disappear for the whole period.

Speaking of disappearing, the system of checking out of the class was…interesting. Some teachers seemed just as confused about it as I was. I was let out of tutorial without a note on multiple occasions, not because the teacher let it slide, but simply because they didn’t know what was allowed and what wasn’t. At least we can all take solace in the fact that the intended purpose of the system, to ensure that students didn’t just walk out and wander around campus, completely failed.

Regardless of all this, we all have stories of those who definitely spend their time unwisely, and I’m not just talking about that one kid who saved studying time for the period before next class. So, children, let’s gather ’round the campfire, and hear these riveting tales unfold. 

I’ll start.

So, it was a long time ago, in a time we’ve all forgotten when our brains rotted from a mix of 4 a.m. bed times and questionably healthy eating this spring break: March of this year. I was in AP European History teacher Ryan Cook’s class, just straight chillin’. But, those around me weren’t exactly chillin’, more like they were boiling hot.

Now, Mr. Cook is usually a pretty cool dude. He’s funny, diligent, relaxed, just overall amazing (you know where that gradebook is Mr. Cook, hint hint, wink wink.) But I think that this time, he was a bit too lenient. It wasn’t like anyone could concentrate on the night’s reading when half of the class was running around and screaming like the room was on fire. 

But it wasn’t until the stapler was thrown at the window when he finally put his foot down. 

Too bad the glass didn’t shatter, that would have been cool. 

Anyway, Cook called the class to attention like a drill sergeant, and finally asked us what our major malfunction was. 

Well, more like he just called out the ever-so-familiar kids that aren’t even in the class but come during support to cause trouble. He then banished them from his realm, and peace was restored to the land. 

But I am not the only one to see a “quirky and crazy™” thing go down in that special 40  minutes after 10:10 a.m. Obviously, or this story wouldn’t have made it past the drafting process. Another riveting tale comes from sophomore Wais Kandahari, whose story of bravery, love, betrayal, and drama you are now blessed to hear.

It was just another student support period in Jacob Martin’s chemistry class for Kandahari. Maybe he was thinking of the upcoming spring break. Maybe he was on his phone. Maybe he was endlessly walking in a circle. I don’t know, I didn’t ask him. Point is, the door to the room was open, and in flew Big Bird.

No, Big Bird can’t fly. It was just a normal bird. Yawn, boring.

The bird decided that the best thing to do was to fly around the room in circles. For their part, much of the class decided that the appropriate thing to do was to freak out, which, to be fair, probably didn’t affect how productive they would’ve been that period anyway.

No matter what Kandahari or his classmates did, the bird would not leave the room. They left all the windows and doors open like there was a gas leak, and, after Martin failed to physically grab the bird (if you’ve seen Mr. Martin’s muscles, you’d probably share my concern for the bird’s bone structure), the students offered to get a net to catch the poor animal. That plan didn’t get off the ground, though. Kandahari said someone even tried to play bird whisperer.

“Oh, there was this one chick who climbed up on the table and tried to be like Mulan and talk to the bird,” Kandahari said. 

For any of you Disney aficionados seething at that sentence now, rest easy that he was subsequently told that the Disney princess who talks to birds is Cinderella, then again corrected to Snow White. Not by me, I forgot that those Disney princess movies existed until then.

As someone who had Martin for sixth period that day, I can finish this tale with a happy ending. The bird (who Martin said was named “Jeffery,”) was a big distraction for the first 30 minutes of the period, visiting every part of the class. (He really liked flying in a circle in the corner and resting on the American flag on the wall). Then finally Jeffery flew out a window into the great unknown. Today, Jeffery has rejoined his bird brethren, and lives like them, feasting on the after-lunch trash left by students in the quad.

And that’s all my time for today. I hope you enjoyed these tales. One might ask, “How can stories about kids throwing staplers and questionably intelligent birds impact my life?” 

Well, I would say to you, maybe the value of the stories were the friends we made along the way.