I was suddenly awakened by a loud and obnoxious buzzing coming from my phone. Every day, my alarm goes off at seven am sharp. Just like in prison, you must always get up at the same time, no exceptions. I turned off my alarm and lay back in bed. Catching myself from nearly falling back asleep, I roll myself out of bed, make my way to the shower, stumbling like a zombie, making a bunch of noise. Afterward, I have to be ready by 8:15 am every morning so that the yellow bus can bring me to my so-called school/prison. I think to myself why so early? A research done by doctors shows that having school early makes kids not get enough sleep that leads to health problems and academic performances.

The bell rings. We then arrive at school and our day is already all planned out for us, with five classes and few breaks. We sit impatiently in our classes awaiting, the ring of the bell to ring signaling our next task. This is all too similar to a prison, where we are forced to wait and to do as we are told by the guards. They expect us to be on time to every class, or we are looked up like criminals and given a yellow card. Hard to be on time when the human body needs at least eight hours of sleep and the average kid sleeps around eleven p.m.

Seriously? Do we still need a color system in high school? I thought that was something for elementary students? Yellow, orange, red, blue, you name it! We have it all here at École François Buote. Late homework?! You get sent to solitary confinement also known as detention to face the warden/principal.

In addition, we have all these rules similar to a prison. When we do something bad, we are penalized and frowned upon but are rarely ever rewarded for good deeds. Are we not supposed to be encouraging students? This being said kids are known to succeed more when rewarded.

On the other hand, we all meet up in our big theatre grades seven through twelve each year, and we go over these same rules. We also receive new rules, and sometimes don’t even make it through the full year before others are added. My friends and I always get a good laugh.

This initially starts when we first began school, all the way back in elementary. They started us off young when were vulnerable and did not know any better. We are taught to raise our hands to speak, taking away our freedom of speech. They enforce the color system and rules when we knew no better. They are already trying to build us into men and women when our minds really aren’t ready.