By: Annabelle Pan

Graphics Editor

Every time you try to make plans with friends, there are always those two people whose busy schedules seem to eliminate all of the possible days to spend time together. One has no time on weekends, and the other is busy every weekday. Making plans to hang out seems to get harder and harder the older we get. In elementary school, all it took was five minutes and a phone call. Once we reached middle school, we had to make plans a few days in advance. As high schoolers, we could begin preparing weeks in advance and still struggle to come up with a time that works for everyone. Of course, we could always arrange one during the break, but people are often traveling. What can we do?

Your best option is to find a time that works for the majority and kidnap everyone else from their extracurriculars. Since you can’t find a day that works for everyone, you might as well give up on that one friend with seven school periods, sixteen outside classes, and sports practice every other day. But, because excluding them would be cruel, just make sure they can’t attend whatever activity overlaps with your hangout plans. Problem solved!

If friend-napping isn’t your cup of tea, you can split your plans into thirty-minute chunks. Surely you can find thirty minutes that everyone has free. Although conversations will be stilted and it will be hard to do anything with such a short time, at least you can hang out with your friends. Find thirty minutes once a week, and, by the end of the month, your total hangout time will be two hours. It’s better than nothing, but not by much.

One of the few ways to get a full hangout with everyone present is to reserve a time a few months beforehand. Pretend you are going to the world’s highest-rated, most overbooked restaurant and compete to make the reservation before all of the times fill up. If you decide on a hangout time months before the event, you can save a spot in your friends’ busy calendars. Just make sure you remind them every day of the hangout, or they might accidentally double-book themselves.

The best, but most time-consuming, way to arrange a time together is by having all of your friends fill out a calendar with any activities. You can find the empty spaces that line up with each person’s schedule and choose a time to hang out. However, this will take a while if they have many miscellaneous activities or events that often change times. For the best results, you could have them map out their schedule for the entire year, week by week, but it might be easier to just go back to friend-napping at that point.

There is also a last resort in case none of the previous solutions work: execute your plans at school. You can all go to one tutorial classroom and watch a movie or play a game together. If your friends don’t go to the same school, then I wish you the best of luck.