I was sitting in English class when at least five students all violently coughed at the same time. I laughed, thinking, “Why are they even here?” A few days later, I became one of those kids wheezing in class.

In the morning, when my mom asked me if I wanted to stay home that day, my response was, “No. I don’t want to make up gym.”

In retrospect, it was absurd that I would rather sneeze my way through gym class and the rest of my day than actually take the time to rest at home so I could recover.

That day I ended up going to school late. I lasted about an hour before I had to see one of the nurses. When I went home, one of the first things I did was email my teachers about work I missed in class that day.

I could not concentrate on getting better because I could only think of the pile of work awaiting me back at school. The fear of falling behind haunted me.

Missing school was a luxury when we were elementary students. Now, it’s a high school student’s worst nightmare.

Although students may feel well enough to come to school, they are still not healthy enough to keep up with their educational and social lives. Feeling “well enough” does not mean that students are not still weak and tired from being sick. Someone would never run a race while weak, so why are recovering students forced to constantly run this race?

Once students are back in school, they have to spend 90 minutes in class and somehow find the time to squeeze in another 90 minutes, multiplied by however many classes they are taking, to make up for what they miss. That means spending a minimum of 12 hours a day focusing only on classwork.

It’s come to a point where students would rather come to school sick than take the time they need to get healthy. School might not be a physical race, but it is a mental one: don’t run it while you’re weak.