The school year has brought plenty of surprises: A competitive football team, parking lot mayhem, and the once-strong sophomores got dusted in Powder Puff. But here’s something really unexpected the 2018-19 school has brought: A sooner-than-expected arrival of the cold season. Usually widespread sickness associated with the cold comes in the latter fall or even winter. This year — despite the warm weather — many have been out of commision because of catching the cold.    

As the school season finally starts to rolling into gear, so has the number of ill feeling students here at North Atlanta. Many students are struggling to keep up their academic lifestyles while also battling the challenges of cold season. After all it’s sometimes hard to complete work when you’re sneezing non stop and feeling a tad on the achy side.  

Among students at North Atlanta, all said the same thing: being sick in school makes it much harder to perform at their academic best. Many students felt as though struggling with even a slight cold could take away from their attention to the important information they were learning in class. “When I’m sick, I can’t pay attention and I’m always tired,” said sophomore Eve Smith. “When I feel this way all I do is I daydream about being home.”

With cold symptoms rising so does the number of kids missing school for health reasons. This brings up the question of attendance and falling behind. “In the wise words of Ms. Brookins ‘Stay organized so you don’t have to get organized,’” said sophomore Holt Marbut. “But it’s hard to get organized if I’m always home sick.”

Many Warriors were pondering the same question: “How to keep the grades up when your health is keeping you sick at home.”  “Whenever I stay home my grades always start to fall behind,” said sophomore Matt Love. “I feel like this just encouraged people to come to school when their sick which hurts the rest of us.”

In face of sickness, Warriors always manage to soldier through their health challenges with a combination of rest, Sudafed, and Netflix binging. Let’s face it: Many annoying things arrived early this year: The first day of school, that first midterm, and the first history paper due. Now, to this list of irritable challenges we can add: the cold season.