Pavlov Strikes Back!

I made an interesting observation (well I think it's sorta neat anyway) today that further proves what Pavlov demonstrated with his famous dogs.

Today we had what we call an "early release day for staff development" which means students get out of school at 1:00 PM and the teachers stay to bond and grow together or something like that. We students love it, our teachers dread it. Apparently "staff development" is one of the stupidest things ever invented in the little suburb of Finneytown, if you ask my science teachers. Since two hours are cut off of our day, all the bells have to be shortened and we go to lunch during 6th bell instead of 5th bell. On normal days high schoolers eat lunch at 12:00 or 12:30, and on days like today lunch is at 11:30 or 11:00. So we're actually eating lunch earlier even though we go in a later bell. When sixth bell rolled around, the majority of my French class expressed that they were hungrier than they normally were by that time of day and welcomed lunch.

I hypothesize (and it may be purely coincidence, but who knows?) that we have become so associated with associating our fifth bell classes with the coming of lunch, that our bodies begin anticipating food once we enter our fifth bell class, even if it's earlier in the day, and by sixth bell we are more than ready to eat despite the fact that it's earlier than we normally have lunch.