Teachers and deans

Dear Teachers and Deans, Teenagers are hard to handle. With our attitudes and stubbornness, we are definitely a handful. We slack off and get labelled as lazy. But what I don’t understand, is why we are all labelled as lazy and trouble. We are labelled as always wanting to underage drink and get drunk with our friends every weekend. I understand that at least 70% of teens have had more than one drink by the age of 18, but what your narrow point of view doesn’t see is that not all of us do drink.

It concerns me that you have such poor vision. Maybe its time to get your eyes checked. Haven’t your parents ever taught you that it’s not nice to judge and assume things about people. Just because we are at the age that underage drinking is high, doesn’t mean that we are all doing it. It’s not “ cool” to be sloppy drunk.

Some kids may think it is, but some of us don’t. The toilet bowl is not my friend and I would prefer not to being hugging it all night. Not ALL of us slack off all week and get wasted on weekends. Some of us actually do have important things to do and want to be productive on the weekends. I’m not saying every weekend we are productive, sometimes we do like to relax just like any other human being does, but that doesn’t mean we are lazy.

We get stressed out and tired just like adults do. Just because we don’t have jobs or bills to pay yet, we do still have other responsibilities to worry about. Many of us do have jobs and do have things we have to pay for. For example: gas, car insurance, and save up for college. Not all of us are spoiled brats that get handed everything by mommy and daddy. But not only the labeling bothers me, its the double standards you seem to have too.

The fact that we could be doing all our homework all week and turn it in on time, but the one or two times we don’t, we get lectured that we need to do it is bogus. Yeah, we need to get it done on time, but you don’t always have our tests and homework graded and handed back to us on time. The excuse of, “ there are a lot, I teach a lot of classes, and wasn’t able to get through all them”, is incredibly sickening for us to hear, especially since, just like you do, we have a lot of other classes too, along with other homework that needs to be done. When we say the same excuse of, “ I had a lot to do and didn’t get around to it”, you snicker your coffee stained teeth at us and tell us its not acceptable. Why is it acceptable for you to “ have had a lot to do and not get around to it”, but its not okay for us? You do realize many of us have work or sports that take up a good amount of our day that gives us less time to do our homework, right? “ Well instead of going to practice, maybe you should sit down and do your homework”.

Yeah, let me just get yelled at and pulled out of things in my sport/ activity I’m in so that I can make you happy when you can’t even grade my test on time. Skipping work to do homework? Thats not even an option. If I have to skip work to get your over bearing homework done, then I also expect you to pay me that money that I lost out on that I also needed. It’s not like we don’t want good grades. I’m not saying all of you are like this, I just would like for you guys to realize that your expectations aren’t always fair or easy to reach.

I’m not going to point fingers and state who does this and who doesn’t. Many of you are great teachers, but sometimes us students need to be cut some slack. We have school work and college to worry about that is stressful enough. The last thing we need is your bickering. We both need to just take a second and realize what the other person might have going on in their lives at the moment. Maybe that would help.

All I know is I would gladly appreciate it if this would stop. The labeling and double standards to come to a stop. I must say though, you do a fine job at teaching us what we need to know for our future and helping us through our college process. I do have to thank you for that. All I want to say here is if you scratch our backs, we will scratch yours.

Sincerely, Gianna