Sometimes in life, clocks can be great. When you throw the headphones on and listen to the soothing 8-beat, arpeggiated ostinato-ish Coldplay creation, for instance. When you time everything perfectly to arrive at class on time, only to realize that the clocks at Ames High run three minutes ahead of everyone else’s time, for instance. Such is frequently the case for senior Hannah Tuggle. Seated at a media center table with senior comrades Devin Becraft and Ali Imran, Tuggle expounded on the issue so problematic, words are difficult to find. "It makes me late," she said. "It’s enraging. It’s just a constant frustration." Imran and Becraft shared her sentiment. "They can’t tell you school starts at 7:50 when it’s 7:48. I don’t like being lied to," Becraft said. Imran added, "You can’t buy back time." Compounding the issue is the fact that the school clocks are not even in sync with each other. In a given class period, clocks throughout the school range everywhere from on time to plain broken. It is possible to find clocks both ahead and behind of cell phone time. Furthermore, each day has the potential to be different from the last, so one never knows how the clocks will be running on a given day. One may argue that today’s kids are too trusting in their technology, but consider that the times displayed on all cell phones are the same, along with the times displayed on computers, including the school computers (except the media center computers, which are mysteriously two hours behind). Tuggle points out that a cell phone’s time is unchangeable, and doesn’t believe students should be counted late to first period when they are on time according to cell phone time. All this begs for an answer to the question why the school doesn’t transition to digital clocks, particularly in the face of the continued purchasing of plasma televisions. After all, clocks and televisions are similar enough that one would think they could fit into the same budget category. Atomic clocks would aid the organization of students. Becraft pointed out that it has become a social hassle that every time a time is designated, that time has to be clarified as school time or regular time. We live in a time when all things, even time itself, are more volatile than at any other time in all time. If the mystery of school time is not solved in due time, Ames High may be destroyed for the first and last time, and that would not be good. The clocks must be fixed for the sake of everyone in the school. In the words of the great Sam Bird, "Time, time, time."