In December, I underwent a facial reconstruction surgery that left me out of school for roughly one month as I was recovering. I returned to school on Jan. 19 unable to participate in gym class, per my doctor’s orders.

As the current gym policy stands, students who miss more than five gym classes for any reason, including medical, will be required to make arrangements with their physical education teacher so that each absence can be “made up” by the end of the unit or else points will be deducted.

Having to “make up” absences in itself is impossible — you cannot attend gym class more times than it occurs to make up for the days you missed. But the school’s policy clarifies that “if it is determined that it is unsafe for the student to remain in the gym, the student will be assigned an alternate location and will complete written work.” Clearly, it is unsafe for me to remain in the gym. And I was, indeed, assigned an alternate location and written work.

However, the policy also states that the work assigned to the student need be “appropriate for the needed modification and accommodations.” Included under this incredibly broad wording would be the fact that the work needs to apply to the material that was covered when the student was absent.

For example, a student missing days out of a basketball lesson should complete a written assignment on, perhaps, the history of basketball. A student missing out on information from their health class should complete an assignment outlining, perhaps, healthy relationships.

How is a student missing out on a unit of handball and other team games required to complete a written assignment on completely irrelevant and inapplicable information such as “the impact Title IX has on high school physical education and interscholastic sports” or “psychological consequences of athletic injuries?”

And how is a 16-page essay on this information deemed “appropriate” for my accommodations? Essays on information that is frankly useless and irrelevant in this context doesn’t seem “appropriate.” It seems like information that would go into an essay for history or psychology class.

Not to mention the fact that the students that were in school while I was out did not even come near to learning this much information. Learning that they’re not allowed to kick the volleyball in class was most likely the extent of what they learned while I was gone.

Aside from the subject matter itself, the fact alone that it is 16 pages of written work is objectively absurd and unnecessary. Most students do not write 16-page essays for their most demanding AP classes — let alone a class they take for the sole reason that they need it to graduate.

I wasn’t on vacation. I wasn’t missing gym just for fun. I wasn’t even warned that I would be assigned such a wildly unreasonable assignment to make up for all of time that I missed. I suggest that our school reconsiders what is considered “appropriate” for this situation. As of right now, our school’s policy is full of umbrella terms that subject students to unnecessary work, which is definitely not appropriate.