The bell rings for lunch, and you go to your locker to get your homework for fifth period. You start walking fast towards the lunch room so you can get in line before it gets too long. However, you reach the line, and it is already too long, but you still wait through all the pushing and shoving. As soon as you get your food and take your first bite, the bell rings.

This scenario plays out this way every day for many students, which is why lunch should be extended to sixty minutes.

The seniors and juniors who are eligible to go off campus for lunch need more than forty-five minutes to get to their destination, order their food and come back. This is especially true for walkers. I know a senior who always rushes because there’s not enough time for her to walk to the Chinese place, order her food, and walk back. Of course there’s no way that there is time to eat.

This is true not only for people who go off campus but also for those who eat in the cafeteria. One problem is that lines in the cafeteria are extremely long. For the people who have their fourth period all the way on the third floor, having to go all the way downstairs only to be greeted by a long line is disheartening.

There are times when I either have to go to tutoring or to a teacher during LAP, and I end up missing lunch alltogether because I don’t have time to get help and then wait in that line.

For people who want to study or review for a retest, they need time to study and should not have to sacrifice lunch for that. This, essentially, forces us to choose between grades or food. Even people who just want to read feel the worry as soon as the bell rings. I’ve had times when I wanted to study in the school library for a test I had the next period and get lunch, but as soon as I got my lunch and sat down so I could read, the time had flown by, and I ended up reading only two or three pages.

Lunch/LAP is our only free period, our only time to see friends, relax, and rejuvenate. More importantly, though, it is our only free time to study or get help, so we should have more time to do these things during lunch. Sixty minutes would be enough time to do all of that, so Paint Branch should find a way to add 15 minutes to our current LAP period.