In elementary school, I remember having desks wide enough for 16-year-old me to take a nap on. Now, I barely have enough space to fit two pieces of paper on most high school classroom desks. Why do our desks at school progressively get smaller as we get older?

For high school students, it’s often already hard to fit a textbook and a note sheet on one desk. But when we need to use laptops in class to complete an online assignment, our other materials either go in our laps or onto the floor. It’s hard to take notes when a Chromebook takes up the entire space on the desk.

If anything, elementary school students should have the smaller desks because they don’t have anything to put on their desks, and we high school students should get the bigger ones, because now we actually have a use for them.