Talos Glitches, Gives Junior 23-Period Daily Schedule

Ah yes, the 10-period school schedule. Some call it outrageous, and others say it’s flat out barbaric. Precisely one student thinks it’s great for productivity and class options, but they were also found to believe that the best place to complete schoolwork is the cafeteria, so we can disregard their judgment as irrelevant and unreliable. Regardless, it seems that as time goes on, students get busier and busier, with Stuyvesant juniors dragging themselves through hallways like exhausted, zombified… well, Stuyvesant juniors. Yet one seems to be unluckier than most.

“Guys why does my Talos schedule say that I have to attend 23 classes a day??! Has this happened to anyone else? HELP PLS ADMIN WON’T REPLY TO MY EMAILS.”

This was the cry of said junior on Facebook, accompanied by a screenshot of a schedule with periods that extend past the allocated space on the dashboard page (which crashed immediately after because it exceeded its threshold of three people being on the site at once). Her extra classes include Freshman Health, AP Chemistry, and AP Pickup Line Delivery, whatever that’s about. What’s more peculiar are the replies and other program changes students have been reporting.

“hasn’t happened to me i think i actually gained a free”

“WOOO AKJDKHEJDEHKJEH I THINK THEY GAVE ME AN EXTRA FREE PD”

“boutta use the talos glitch to go home, take a nap, then come back”

“bump”

So, could it be that the Programming Office gave this student all of the classes that others lost? Was this an accident? Or do they just particularly despise her? Is there some deep-rooted checkered past here that needs exposing? Apparently not, because this was how the administration responded after a week of panic, chaos, and general anarchy.

“It appears that a glitch in our Talos system has given everyone an extra free period, and this one student has been programmed to take all of the classes others have subsequently lost. Specifically, she must take a different set of classes every month or so to fulfill this program change.”
“And why hasn’t it been fixed yet?”
“idk lol our tech guy’s out sick figure it out”

Ignoring the fact that a website intended for use by thousands of students is run by a singular individual (you go IT guy, that is very swag of you), it seems that until further notice, this student will need to earn credits for every scheduled course or risk not being able to graduate. While this may seem like a stressful situation to be in on top of the college admissions process and overall high school business, look on the bright side––you can’t worry about sleeping in too late if you don’t sleep at all!

And so we find ourselves in a perfect little Omelas situation in which one student suffers sleepless nights and a growing disdain for life due to school in order for others to get that sweet, sweet free period. Do we protest and help? Or should the community stay silent and let the administration—I mean, the mysterious magic that governs Talos—handle it? I personally believe that to leave this as it is would be an injustice, and I cannot accept this free no matter how tempting it may be.* How can we call ourselves members of this community if we cannot step in to help just one of us fend off the monster that is programming technicalities? How can we stand in this building exist in the general vicinity of New York on our Zoom devices without doing what is right? After all, we all know what it’s like to drown in the calamities of our flawed education system––let’s make it better by demanding a fix for this person’s schedule.

* The writer of this article was found writing this article after taking a nap through her third free in a row.