Best of times, worst of times.

               It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This is a phrase that can describe staying home due to illness as a high school student. To some it may seem like one of the best things that could happen to them, others might see it the complete opposite. To me, it’s both.

               To begin with, you get to stay home! It’s great, you might get to sleep in (Depending on what your parents are like), you get to watch TV, play video games, do whatever you want to do for an entire day, without the immediate threat of homework looming over your head. For teenagers in high school, this might be what you normally do most days of the week. Those of us who are taking a few harder classes, though, might see this as an oasis of calm in the shitstorm that is weekdays.

               Unfortunately, the downsides of staying home from school because you’re coughing up your lungs or vomiting blood are many, and they’re pretty much unavoidable. Even if you’re the sickest person on the planet, if you miss three days of school in one week, that next week will be hell for you. Your teachers will expect you to complete all the homework that they gave your classmates in one night, even though everyone else had three nights. I mean, it doesn’t matter that you’re still recovering from being sick, right? Teachers seem to think that the rest and relaxation that you got from staying home is going to help you perform better. And they also seem to think that you chose to get sick, and definitely should have come to school anyway. Getting everyone else sick be damned! Their classes are more important than everything else, obviously. So the massive amount of homework that will be piled on top of you after you’re sick kind of sucks.

On top of that, though, is the actual fact that you’re sick, and probably were worse. If you were sick enough to miss school, you probably weren’t feeling good enough to really enjoy your time off. It’s a terrible fact of life, but most sick days are actually wasted because you’re sick. So in total, being sick really sucks. I do not recommend it. Do not ask your sick friends to cough on you. That is dangerous behavior. But I also don’t condone going overboard and wearing a full hazmat school around your friends because they sneezed that one time three years ago.