After 11 years of schooling, you’d think that I, a senior, know what it means to be respectful, on task, aware and responsible. Actually, almost those exact phrases were engraved into every high schooler’s heads starting in kindergarten. But judging from the excessive ROAR-themed first week, you’d think being Respectful, On-task, Aware and Responsible were groundbreaking concepts.

While jogging freshmen’s and even upperclassmen’s memories once a year of the ROAR guidelines is reasonable, wasting an entire day and 30 minutes every following day is unnecessary.

ROAR began in my freshman year, and barring the original confusion over what the “A” stood for I have become well-acquainted with the acronym, at the very least. In more accurate terms, it has been senselessly beaten into my skull through over-repetition and now through “lessons” during a potentially useful period.

At this point in their lives, high schoolers know who they are. They will either be a ROARer or not and that won’t change no matter how often they hear the acronym.

The informational assemblies replace and ruin certain first-day motivational speeches I have always anticipated. Each year you and your class get corralled into the Patti Baker to hear their class speech. Every year I look forward to hearing how the speech changes as we change and grow. Unfortunately, these speeches were absent, and instead students snoozed through a basic ROAR crash course presentation.

For students, one lesson was sufficient, but admin did not stop there. Taking up the new ROAR period for the first week is unnecessary andleft students with a bad first impression of the promising new priority period. This makes me worry that students will give up on the period before it can actually become useful.

These forced lessons, which students and teachers alike shared a laugh over, help nobody. We know how to be good people, some people just choose to not be good people. Making students create a Pinterest board on how to remain on task just makes admin seem like they’re attempting to tap into the youth through a form of social media, yet they fail by using pinterest which is in no way young or hip.  

Had the ROARing ended on the first day I would not be writing this but rather than realize we are all near adulthood and either know how to be a good or bad, admin decided to drag ROAR on.

A lesson on the priority period during its first occurrence makes enough sense, so much sense that I don’t think anybody needed an entire week of explanation or introduction. Students and teachers alike are already got a bad opinion of the period before it had really started. This period should be used properly to start because it can be a great help to many students who need extra help or want to get some homework done.