I pride myself with being a very organized person and make a conscious effort to stay as organized as possible, but, unfortunately many of my classmates do not share the same qualities when it comes to neatness.

In high school, I have always considered it essential to maintain at least a minimal level of organization, but many students that defy this custom while still maintaining good grades. As Jacob Freedman (17′) opens up his backpack, miscellaneous, crumpled papers spill out. Inside, you can see the tops of overflowing folders, distressed spiral notebooks, an empty Welch’s fruit snack wrapper shoved between a pack of half-opened college-ruled notebook paper, and a chewed-up eraser near the bottom.

This disaster of a backpack looked more like a trash can to me, but ironically, its owner is a straight A student taking HL math (arguably the hardest class for upperclassmen in IB), SL chemistry (another challenging class), participates in the club Mu Alpha Theta, is a part of student government and much more.

“For me, I have just never been organized,” Freedman said. “My method works for me and I don’t see why I would have to fix it because I’ve managed to get through most of high school this way. Why break my streak?”

Another student named Abigail Foster (’17) said, “I’m most definitely the least organized person I know, hands down. I don’t really like folders or binders, they’re really just too much work. But I’m actually highly organized up here, and I don’t think that it will be an issue later in life because I’ve found a system that works for me. My backpack may look unorganized to you, but all the papers go in chronological order so I can always find what I need.”

These students may argue that their system works for them in high school, but I feel it is necessary to learn the skills of organization in order to be successful and to be taken seriously in most professional careers. Simply walking into an office with papers stacked to the ceiling is not how I would describe an efficient workplace, and as much as we don’t want to admit it, it causes you judge a person’s reliability.

Furthermore, employers don’t want to hire someone an unorganized worker when they could, in many cases, buy a machine to do the same for cheaper. The mechanization of our labor is a real issue that this generation of rising teens will be faced with when looking for jobs after college.

Organization works for some and is seemingly unnecessary for others, but when it comes to the professional world, I strongly encourage it.