Carole wrote this poem in March of 1995 when she was a High School Senior.

Carole wrote this poem her freshman year at Plymouth State College.

xy²

Jumbling confusion.....

I don’t know why I am here

I’m not following him

And he doesn’t seem to care.

Well, that’s fine

Because I don’t give a damn

about him either.

He would rather be skiing

or mountain biking

He has only one way of thinking-

He’s always right, no doubt about it-

And math isn’t about liking.

As soon as I know where I’m going,

I’m gone.

You won’t find me in room 305

Period 4, or any other time.

My mind, my imagination-

It’s wasted in here.

I need to be somewhere else

Where I can really be me-

A woman without regret

I don’t need to be patronized,

And I don’t need to learn xy².

Well, I really should be asleep right now, but why bother?  Sleep wasn’t part of the big plan of going to college.  Although it’s the only part of life during college that’s free, if you analyze it that much.

I honestly wonder about the teachers here.  They give you so much work-do they expect the students to ever sleep, because I think the only way that I’d ever get it all done in time, was if I never slept.  Maybe teachers just think that theirs is the only class we take or something-that’s not right, it’s kind of self-centeredness.

When I see ads on TV for pills like “Sleepinal,” they say 90%, or some figure close to that, of people suffer from sleep-deprivation- I think these expert are polling at least half of all the colleges and the U S and that is where they get this information.  I know my parents get plenty of sleep-they’re always in bed by 10:00 every night.  I’m up until 1:00 a.m. most nights.  And when you have to work a 7 a.m.-that’s only 5 hours of sleep, assuming I get up at 6:00 to get ready.

Doctors say that 8 hours of sleep is sufficient - well, those doctors obviously aren’t talking about college students-I’d say, just a guess, that the average amount of sleep all student get is 4 or 5 hours a night, during the week.  And its all the work we do. And on top of getting an insufficient amount of sleep-we’re all broke!  What kind of a system is this- AAHHH!