A lot has changed over the past year. I remember having to get out of my third period at 12:17 to go to lunch. Now I find myself having to get out of tutorial at 10:29 and heading to lunch, while half of the school gets out 12:17 for their lunch. This early lunch has a lot of problems that other students have noticed.

I don’t like being separated from my friends. Last year all of my friends and I would spend lunch together. We talk, play tricks on each other, eat, laugh, and enjoy our lunch together. The only time we were separated was when one of us had to go somewhere like the dentist, or didn’t come to school. There was about thirty of us. Now, our group has been drastically reduced to nine (in the first lunch) from the group of thirty. Mrs. McCarthy announced to the whole school that she wanted the students to be with their friends. This dream of hers was not able to be fulfilled; this is because not all of us have the same subjects that will keep us in the same lunch. Other groups have the same problem as us.

Besides breaking friends up, the first lunch has a major flaw: it’s too early. Most students are not hungry at this time. The students who are hungry are the ones who did not have breakfast. To most of them this would be brunch. I did not have anything to eat in last year’s brunch. If I didn’t eat anything last year at this time, what makes people think that I will eat anything at the same time this year? This time around I occasionally get something to drink, but I hardly eat anything heavy. I know that some people did have something to eat last year during brunch, and these people who are accustom to eating something early. They are the ones that eat in the early lunch.

This is a problem, because the students that did not eat during lunch time become hungry during class. They begin to lose concentration, on the task that is in front of them, and they blank out. They don’t get their work done and if they don’t get their work done, they don’t get a good grade in class, which is a problem in the long run.

There is also another thing I noticed. When it is about 12:30 and first lunch is in their third period, and second lunch is going on, an announcement comes over the loud speaker. This is interrupting the classes that are taking place. Not only is class interrupted, but teachers and students get upset because they are being robbed of their learning time. But there is another problem. The office can not go searching for students having lunch and handing them the information that is presented to them.

The school needs to either go back to one lunch or move the tutorial period. Moving the tutorial would make the first lunch more suitable for students because they would be having lunch at 11:30 rather than 10:30. This, while not perfect, would a fair compromise.