As a freshman, my bright, shiny, fourteen-year-old eyes anticipated heading off to school for an incredible six hours of staring at my computer screen, following Harold the Homeboy as he leapt onto endlessly escalating bars.

Icy Tower is familiar to most members of the current senior class, and although the games and trends of how to waste time on the computer have evolved since the age of Harold the Homeboy, the concept is the same. The introduction of laptops to high school students brought a whole new meaning to not paying attention in class.

A few short months into my freshman year, nearly every non-academic website was blocked, and detentions for those caught e-mailing during class or with a game downloaded on their laptops were being handed out at a rate that probably wiped a redwood forest out of existence. It felt like the administration didn’t trust us enough to give us any freedom on our personal computers.

Ever since then, I’ve resented my laptop with a passion that the entire class of 2010 can understand. It started to feel heavier on the walk to class, and it became something I identified with as making me a prisoner to this school. The technical issues with the laptops added to my contempt, but the trust issue was what really fueled my outrage.

Facebook is now unblocked at school, for what reason is irrelevant, and I’m glad it is. All websites should be unblocked at school, with the exception of filters for illegal sites. Aside from that, teachers do not need to monitor what students do during class. The option to not pay attention has always been available, and students will always take advantage of it. Whether they are passing a note or shooting a tweet makes no difference.

Students grow from having the option to fail. Before laptops, students that didn’t want to take notes just didn’t take notes. Some kids need to fail a test or two, or even become ineligible, before they take responsibility for their grades. But once taking notes and studying becomes a choice, the cycle of rebellion, failure, and reluctant note taking will end, and students  will eventually make the decision to learn in a way that works for them.

As far as classes whose subjects didn’t hold my attention, I learned the most in the ones where my teachers let me get sucked into Icy Tower, or whatever the distraction happened to be, because I came to the conclusion myself that I needed to start paying attention.

I know that teachers and the administration don’t want to see students fail, but how far are they willing to go to prevent this? Besides, it’s possible to brutally force students to pay attention, but that won’t inspire them to learn or study the materials, and they especially won’t retain it. In fact, it will be a year worth of class wasted when they block it from their memory completely on the first day of summer.

I offer this as a member of the guinea pig class, and I offer this because I was that lazy, unmotivated, computer game addict.

Kaitlin Bobbin can be reached for comment at [email protected].