Column: Dirty Dorms Done Differently

My Marvelous Mayhem

By: #18, Defenseman

Should high school student’s rooms have to be perfectly clean? What if that room belongs to an athlete who trains for three to four hours each morning and then goes to school in the afternoon? What if the room belongs to a student on honor roll? Well, what if the room belongs to a student who trains for three to four hours each morning and then goes to school at night and maintains honor roll?

Dorm Room

I believe that with achievements should come freedom. Every morning my roommate and I wake up at the crack of dawn to do an intense off ice workout followed by an equally hard on ice workout. By the time our morning is complete we have to rush back to school to shower and get ready for school plus eat lunch before school starts at 1.

School is in session from 1-6:15, after school there is a hour and 45 min period that is our only free time all day. But we do not always have this time; sometimes it is filled with dinner, meetings, extra courses, kitchen duty or homework. Starting at 8 is study hall which lasts until 9. After study hall we are expected to have all of our homework complete and have lights out around 10:15.

My roommate and I both maintain honor roll, so imagine our shock when we were kicked out of our room during the 8-9 study hall and were forced to study downstairs in a monitored study hall. The reason: our beds were not made and our room was not perfectly clean. The room is ours to do as we please; we both enjoy studying on the floor so sometimes our books are on the floor.

Also, after being physically tortured all morning through doing stairs, running fast laps and skating suicides, we need to rehydrate. To do this, we drink a lot of Gatorade and bottled water. Due to our green outlook on life we recycle these bottles. After drinking and before recycling, they sit in a stack on our dresser.

Messy Room

I don’t think that it is fair to punish people who don’t have the cleanest room if they are keeping their lives together in all the other aspects. Maybe some people function better when they don’t have to worry picking up books after finishing homework or hanging up a sweatshirt that they just took off.

Not only is it not fair but it is fairly unrealistic. In the schedule I described please look and tell me where there is time to go and spend 20 minutes cleaning, sweeping and dusting a room on a daily basis. On multiple occasions my roommate and I have proven that we have the ability to play hockey at a high level and keep our marks up in the classroom.

Given this information, haven’t we demonstrated that a little mess does not affect our lives or what we accomplish, haven’t we shown that we deserve a little freedom? Sometimes perfection is not the only answer, in fact, sometimes chaos helps life become more perfect.