When you walk down the halls, you may ask people you know how their day is in an attempt to be polite. The average response is, ‘Good, and you?’ After you respond with the same answer of ‘good’, you continue about your day and do not think much of it. 

     Whenever someone asks me this question, my response will always be ‘good’, no matter how I am actually feeling. I never mean to respond that way, but it has become such a routine that I do not need to think about my answer before I say it. 

     After a long day where you went to school, had practice and did homework, your family gathers to eat dinner. If your family is anything like mine, dinner is the only time everyone is together because of busy schedules. 

     When you sit down to eat, a parent asks, ‘How was your day at school?”’ After you sigh, not needing to think about your answer, you say, ‘It was good.’

     In my family, that is the wrong answer. If I answer like that, they try to get more out of me than just that my day was good by asking even more questions. 

     There is a difference between someone asking to be polite and genuinely wanting to know how your day was. Even though I know they are genuine, I find it annoying sometimes because it feels like I answer that question every day, and it becomes repetitive. 

     I have just spent my entire day at school and I do not always want to talk about how my day went because it is often the same as the previous day. Also, school is not always positive, and many students can understand how talking about a bad day at school can make them feel worse.

     In an article published by Yale News, a national survey from the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence and the Yale Child Study Center found that 75% of 21,678 surveyed high school students had negative self-reported feelings toward school. 

     Of course, other things happen at school, but parents asking how friends, teachers and classes are doing never change.

     While some people find asking about how their day went to be comforting and kind, I do not feel the same. I know people do it often, but asking someone how their day went is a repetitive conversation starter. In my eyes, it is the equivalent of the phrase, ‘The weather sure is nice today.’ We all know that phrase serves no value besides filling the awkward silence.

     After a long day of school, I do not feel like talking about it, and there is nothing wrong with school being just good because that is what it feels like sometimes. An idea for the next time you sit down at the dinner table is to think about your family’s likes and goals to initiate meaningful conversations rather than just asking how their day was.