BEEP! CLEAR! Oh wait, this is not a hospital?
That is one of the many jokes associated with our now not-so-new bell system. When it first arrived, the students could not have been more confused.
From the beginning there were no warnings or notices informing us of these new bells beforehand, so all of a sudden one morning—Beep!—there’s a random noise issuing (not too loudly might I add) from the PA system telling us to leave for class at 7:29 as opposed to our usual time of 7:25.
Though this is not a huge difference, it is significant enough that students were looking at their watches in complete and utter bewilderment after preparing to leave for class and failing to hear the dismissal bell.
Not to mention the most basic quandary associated with these bells: why we need two different tones.
I understand the concept of the warning bell and the you-should-be-in-class bell, but one of the bells (the long ringing one) sounds like an intense scene in “Jersey Shore” where the cursing is used more than average.
And the other bell (I can’t even describe it without sarcasm) sounds like an alien invasion from Mars or a Wookiee from “Star Wars;” enough said.
On the plus side, when the bell system was installed, the clocks were reset so that they actually tell the correct time. Impressive right?
To some extent, yes. Now we don’t have to approximate how much time until the next bell rings, which we all know students love to stress about.
Another inconvenient aspect is that all the bells seem particularly loud in classrooms but rather quiet in the Sports Lobby or the halls. How is that possible?
Maybe we just need a settling phase, but as of now, during 5th and 6th periods, the bells for the lunches cause more of a disruption in class than a student walking in late which is what the bells were there to eliminate in the first place.
They’ve become so disruptive in many classes that every time the teacher talks and a bell rings, he or she has to pause for what feels like an eternity and then try to get back on topic when the whole charade is over.
Either way you spin it though, good or bad, teenagers only care if the bell at the end of the day gets them out at exactly 2:10.