By Brett A. Mejia ’13
The Roundup

Stumbleupon, iPhones, television, video games—these are all forms of distraction from doing the day’s drudgery.

Distractions are what cause students to stay up late at night completing unfinished homework.

They cause us to divert our attention from what is important like school work and entertain us with something more amusing.

School work is tedious and requires a lot of thought and attention and after a day of school your mind is lost and on another planet.

With the aid of the Tablet computers in every student’s backpack, distractions are inevitable because of how vast the Internet has become.

When you take a study hall, do you actually study or does something else entice your interests so that the 50-minute period seems like a five-minute period?

Another example is when a teacher gives you time in class to work on something. Do you start and then fade off to something else or do you actually complete the assignment in one sitting?

I think we all know the answers to these questions.

During the school day there is an endless array of sounds, sights and smells that grab the attention of a sidetracked student.

Every so often the barbeque grills get fired up for a faculty lunch. With windows left open in classrooms the smell of fresh air is quickly contested by the sweet smell of hamburgers being grilled.

In my math class I can hear trucks backing up and lawnmowers and leaf blowers from outside and it draws my attention, but I have to resist so I can focus on the matters at hand.

There is also the argument of whether or not sports are a distraction because of the amount of time and effort that is added to the workload that students bring home.

When I get home I just want to go to sleep because of all the work and stress that I have dealt with from the previous night and the current day.

But I forget about the four hours of homework that is just waiting for me in my backpack.

It doesn’t seem very tantalizing and I try to not think about it, then my dogs start barking, my cell phone buzzes and the distractions begin.

At the day’s end there are many distractions that cause students to get off ask and not focus on what the matter at hand is.

The solution is to have self-control and it is up to the student to shut off or get rid of anything that can distract you.

Even though there are noises and other uncontrollable distractions, students still have to be able to block them out.