One Day In the Life of Josie

The shining numbers on Josie’s alarm clock read, 6:03 a.m. She managed to hit the snooze button with great force, and fall back to sleep. 10 minutes later, 6:13 a.m., the tone rang again, and she reached her hand over to press the snooze button, ‘just 5 more minutes she thought to herself.’ 6:53 a.m., Josie finally rolled out of bed. As she squinted her eyes, the bright sun that was shining through her window was definitely not her friend this morning. Rummaging through her closet to find a decent outfit to wear, she decided on leggings and a sweatshirt. ‘I’m so late this morning! I guess I’ll just wear this’ she thought to herself. “Bye, Love you Mom!” As she grabbed a bagel out of her mother’s hand and raced out the door to complete another long day at school.

Of course, stuck in traffic, again. Trying to get out of Los Angeles on a Monday morning was the definition of an impossible task. Honking horns, bumper to bumper cars, and impatient businessmen who were just minutes away from missing their 8 a.m. meeting, populated the freeway in which Josie was sitting on for 45 minutes before pulling in to the school parking lot. 8:27 a.m., ‘Perfect, it will take me two minutes to walk to my locker, and one minute to get to Chemistry. Just in time for that brutal class,” she said.

Block One Chemistry felt like an eternity, as this was Josie’s least favorite class. As Mr. Jones was passing back the recently graded tests, Josie’s stomach turned. This was not the way that she wanted to start her Monday. She took a deep breath in and flipped it over to find a 73.5% written across the top in red, as if it didn’t grab her attention enough. As she let out a big sigh, she could hear her mother yelling at her in her head. ‘This was not going to be a good night’ she thought to herself. The chattering of the students behind her consisted of “What did you get?” “Oh god, my mom is going to kill me!” “Yes! A 97%!” Trying to feel better, she made herself believe that there were other kids in the same boat as her. Finally, the bell rang and Blocks Two, Three, and Four went by quickly but were made up of vocabulary quizzes, presentations, and an in-class essay. She could hear her stomach growling by the end of Block Four, just in time for lunch.

As Josie walked through the hallway with her friends, students were scrambling out of classrooms trying to get to the cafeteria as quickly as possible. It looked as if these kids hadn’t eaten in weeks! After pushing and shoving, Josie finally made it to the lunch line. Mushy meatloaf, watery mashed potatoes, and green beans made up the lunch menu for today. Josie and her friends made their way to the usual table with their yellow lunch trays full of mush resting on their palms. Lunch conversations consisted of weekend plans, homework, and of course…the new gossip about the “The 5 Chicks” (the most popular girls in school). As students filed out of the cafeteria, only three more classes remained and another school day out of 182 was complete.

3:30 p.m., Josie finally hopped in her car and made her way home. She wasn’t looking forward to coming home as she knew it would consist of: her mother and father yelling at her for her poor grade on the Chemistry test, constant bickering with her 7-year-old brother, and of course, relentless hours of homework.

After a long night of just what she had expected, Josie made her way to her bed. ‘This is by far the best part of any day’ she thought to herself. Right as her head hit the pillow, her eyes shut, but only for 6 hours, as she knew that the 6 a.m. wakeup was needed to start another day in the life of Josie. (668)