As we approach midterms and student life gets especially busy, we need to make sure that we are prioritizing our time. So many students have clubs, sports, and classes to keep up with, and not everyone has a surplus of time after school. That makes the time we have during the school day especially valuable. I myself struggle to make it to all of my club meetings, get my homework done, and keep up with sports.
This is why Cougar Time should be an important part of the school day. Even if you’re focusing in all of your classes and doing everything you can to finish your work, you are still more than likely going to have extra work that needs to be done outside of those class periods. While the current Cougar Time schedule aims to support our academic needs, it does not always give students enough flexibility to use that time effectively. It becomes especially difficult when many clubs meet on the same day and students have to choose between attending meetings and getting other work done.
For students involved in multiple activities, having so many club meetings scheduled during the same Cougar Time can create another problem instead of solving one. The time we could be using to work is taken up by meetings, while students involved in more than one club may not even be able to attend everything they need to.
Caleb Longoria, a student who participates in after-school sports and honors classes, said he thinks club meetings should be spread out more. “I think they should spread it out throughout the week,” he said when asked how clubs should be scheduled.
He also explained how the current schedule can make it harder to use Cougar Time for academics. “It’s a little bit unfair because if I need to go to the library for a project or if I need to work on something I can’t. I feel like it would be better to spread it out and keep two tables for clubs in the back of the library.”
Other students have also suggested spreading club meetings throughout the week instead of placing so many on the same day. Having a few meetings each day could make it easier for students to attend their clubs without falling behind on work or missing important information. It could also give students more opportunities to use Cougar Time for academics on days when they do not have club or sports commitments.
As students who aim to achieve all of our goals, our time is vital to us. Cougar Time has the potential to help students balance academics and extracurricular activities, but its schedule needs to give us enough flexibility to actually do both.
