Essays

My daily life is governed by routine, almost totally, What can one expect in the daily life from an ordinary schoolboy except routine?

Every morning, except when there is no school, I have to get up before the sun rises, perform the morning routine of visiting the bathroom, clean up and then get ready for breakfast. Breakfast is always the same affair of bread, jam and tea or coffee, with an egg or two on some days.

Next it is the inevitable donning of my school uniform and going out to wait for the school bus to arrive. It is always exciting if it rains in the morning, for then we get a horde of screaming wet school kids brandishing umbrellas like swords at one another. That makes the driver mad, but it is a wonderful change from the dull routine of dry mornings. Alas, wet mornings are few and far in between. How great it would be if I could control the weather and make every morning exciting. If I could I would even have snow and ice. That would really liven things up. However, maybe fortunately, I could only daydream for that.

The school bell sounds incredibly dull after having heard it every morning for years. The school should get a better sounding bell, probably one that plays a tune instead of that monotonous knocking of metal against metal. We could have a different tune each week. After all in this age of computers, that is a possibility. But, I suppose, the headmaster would rather keep the old bell. Broadcasting tunes is the job of a radio station, not a school's.

In class, the daily grind sets in. 1 count the days—from black Monday to bright Saturday until there is some respite on Sunday, Then it is back to the grind, the next week and the next and the next, ad nauseam.

The only bright spots in the routine of school life are the sports day and the speech day where we can get out of the routine and do something different. Also sometimes we may get a half-day off if something unexpected occurs that warrants it.

After school, in the afternoons, there is always homework to be done and tution classes to attend and in the evenings there are some sports to be played. There is nothing exciting about homework, and sports become too routine after a time. Again these things drag on and on.

When the sun sets, it is time to do some studying and probably watch television a bit. I struggle through the enormous amount of information in the school books, Sometimes. I wonder why young people like me have to work trying to stuff facts and figures into our tired brains just to obtain a few extra marks in the examinations. So after an hour or two of intensive mental activity, the television set is a most welcome change. However, after a while of being informed of the latest killings in the Middle East, the already tired mind just wants to call it quits. So off to bed I go, to shut my consciousness from the daily routine for eight hours or so. If I am lucky 1 might get a lovely dream about doing things that I like to do, but even dreams can become routine, like a video tape that keeps on playing the same scene over and over again.

In the face of such ordinariness and sameness, what can I do? For the time being, I suppose there is nothing much one can do. I cannot just quit and run away from everything- Where can I go except maybe to another routine somewhere. When I am older and have more autonomy, then I can do something. I realize that the boredom of routine can beavoided by doing the same things differently and doing different things off and on, just to break the routine. By having more bright spots of happy activities, I am confident that I can defeat the numbing effects of the routine.