Not Exactly Lazy, Just Bored

Erilynn
Erilynn
Nov 8 · 3 min read

It’s the middle of the school year, and you walk into your biology class. Taking biology before lunch would usually be tiring, but today, you’re positively bouncing up and down. Why?

Experiments and labs! It’s your favorite part of the class, and the teacher makes it so genuinely interesting and exciting that you don’t mind writing the essay too much.

A couple years pass, and you drop your backpack next to your seat in another biology class. AP Bio. Fantastic.

Ever since you started, you just can’t find the will inside you to study for tests. You know it will be good for you, so why don’t you? It’s only going to be helpful.

The teacher’s monotone voice drones on and on for an hour, and you’re the first one out the door when the bell rings.

This is a common situation in high school. Even if you had to write the same essay, with the same word count and same prompt, the essay in the the first biology class would most likely have been much, much easier than writing it in the second class.

The Fun Theory says that this is because you are not having enough fun.

A study done in 2015 by Volkswagen Sweden shows that “ fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.” He aimed to make people healthier by making them take the stairs instead of escalators.

But, would this even be possible? For years, doctors and specialists had recommended taking stairs instead of escalators, but nothing had changed.

Volkswagen threw a little fun into the mixture, and soon afterwards, 66% more people were taking the stairs rather than the escalator, which they placed right next to the stairs.

The staircase they used to experiment was interactive, and shaped like a giant keyboard. It would make sounds if you stepped on a certain key, and as a result, it became much more interesting than a simple set of escalators.

When people are taking the stairs, they are using more energy, and overall, it should be harder. It should, but the people most likely didn’t even notice they reached the top of the stairs.

The answer lies in having fun, and the same applies to classes in high school. When people are having fun, you could assign them assignments that are two or three times harder than what they are used to, and they would still complete them without batting an eye.

However, in a boring class, even if it is a simple task, such as completing a worksheet, people will moan and groan about it.

A conversation I had with my friends the other day reflected this conclusion.

A: “Hey, what’s your favorite class?”

B: “Oh.. uh.. I’d say that it’s journalism.”

A: “Isn’t the workload insane, though? You guys are always so busy and writing a crap ton of essays.”

B: “Well, it’s better than math, or something!”

A: “Why? In math, there’s a lot less work to do.”

B: “But the teacher makes it so boring. I’d rather write three essays in a day than spend three hours in that class!”

Teachers should take this information seriously. Perhaps students would be able to be better students if they had a little fun once in a while.

— — — — — — — — — —

Sources:

…as well as personal experiences from a student in high-school.

Erilynn

Written by

Erilynn

A student in high school discovering people..

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