Want Snow Days Back?

If you’re picking this up on your way in, welcome back to your torture chamber. Or if you’re taking it on your way out: YOU’LL BE BACK. You’ll always have to come back if you want to have any hope for your academic future, and that’s exactly why you came here in the first place, isn’t it, you little slave to your academic aspirations? There is no freedom from Stuyvesant High-On-Coffee School. You are chained to this academic establishment from the moment you walk across the bridge. There is no “freedom,” only the monster in Principal Yu’s office that is feeding off the wills to live of every student and staff member.
A few instances exist where you are allowed on a leash out of the school domain: the weekends, holidays, random PSAT administrations (torture), and whatever goes on during Regents week (even more torture). But even with all these, we get long, painfully slow weeks, largely in the dreaded months of March and May. Uninterrupted torture awaits, because there’s going to be a coincidental epidemic of sick days! Your only hope for freedom during these times is the “snow day.” But here lies another dead end! NYC GETS NO SNOW! The last time we had a white Christmas was probably 1995. Why is this? Did Santa turn off the snow machine because there were too many naughty kids? And anyway, we want the blessing of a snow day during the day-off deserts of months-that-start-with-‘M’, not December! (No, wait, never mind, any school day). No matter the extent of climate change, there’s no chance of a snowstorm in May. There is a chance for a snowstorm, one or even two, in March, though! And for that possibility, the entire student body (and some of the staff) will be praying. 

Well, now that we’re clear on the plan for next—hold up, I’m being reminded of something. Oh horror! NYC schools, reddit.com sinisterly whispers, are notoriously reluctant to close. Never mind, kids. We really need a proper blizzard that completely messes up the subway to be freed. Perhaps it’s better to pray for the sky to catch some jaundice like it did last year, but ever since Covid, the DOE has found a way around days off even if we get Canada’s leftover barbecue smoke or snow cone weather. The much-dreaded remote learning. 

I’m sure we can all see by now what needs to be done. They can’t use the internet to keep teaching us if there is no internet. We must destroy the online web if we are to ever be free. Listen to me, my fellow students, for I have a message to deliver.

I have a dream that one day, in the non-existent hills of New York City, sons and daughters of former white- and blue-collar workers will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and work together. I have a dream that, one day, even the state of New York, a state sweltering with the heat of climate change, sweltering with the pain of school, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and fun. I have a dream that my fellow little children will one day live in a nation where they will not go to school on extreme climate days but on regular school days only. I have a dream. (This is not academic dishonesty since I rephrased in my own words what ChatGPT said to write.)

Or, if that doesn’t work, we can start a new pandemic instead. One so baffling that not even Einstein would be able to develop a cure. It is always easier to cause a problem than to solve it (cough cough Trump cough cough). Let’s stop it here before we get in trouble. If you’re interested though, find and join us, we shall be Hidden Under Dunkin So Order Nachos to See The Area In Remarkable Secrecy.