Why would anyone choose a 9:30 lunch?

9:30 AM is breakfast time for most people, but for others, it is their school lunch period. A lunch period this early should be criminal. People do not even eat brunch this early in the morning!

As a four-year St. Joe veteran, the best lunch period starts at 12:10 PM. With C-period lunch, you get pretty much a little over an hour of a break (including homeroom), and then you have to go four straight hours without a break. Meanwhile, if your lunch started at 12:10 PM, you would get a 20-minute break in homeroom; then, about an hour and a half later, you would have lunch. Not to mention that you can not eat anytime outside of lunch. So you have to go four straight hours without consuming food if you have a C-Period lunch.

When talking with fellow students who had C-period lunch, Bennett Schasiepen said, “I am mentally tired at the end of the day; you can feel your eyes close. I definitely want to sleep.” Forensics teacher Mr. Burr said C period lunch was “rough.”

Food is essential to our daily routines and is required to maintain bodily health. Going without food for extended periods can increase depression and anxiety. This can lead to binge eating, which can become a lifelong problem. Binge eating is one of the most unaccounted causes of eating disorders. Effects of binge eating include weight gain, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes.

The easiest way to fix C-period lunch is to ban it. However, this might not be possible because of scheduling conflicts. Another solution would be to let those students out of their E or F period class 5 minutes early to give us time to go to the cafeteria or to take a little break. A quick fix is letting the C-period lunch students eat a snack during the day instead of only being allowed to eat in the cafeteria.

Average students may have a 10-to-15-minute attention span, which is lower when going for long periods without food. It may be that without those longer attention spans, students are more likely to have behavioral issues. This should be investigated further.

Try to avoid C-period lunch at all costs. It’s brutal, and you would be better off with a later lunch period. This is a simple solution to being a better student at any school, including St. Joe.