Backpacks vs. Lockers

By Caitlin Hess and Emmaline Sprick

Middle school students utilize both backpacks and lockers. During the COVID-19 outbreak, lockers were taken away in order to promote social distancing. But this year, they’re back! Here’s the inside scoop on pros, cons, and preferences.

Lockers have a number of upsides, including saving your shoulders from hauling around heavy books and supplies. In addition to that, they can help to organize all of your books to save them from being crammed into your backpack. Downsides of lockers include having to remember and put in your combination, as well as having to stop by your locker between classes, when it’s out of the way. 

Backpacks can help when you have trouble opening your locker. (FBI… open up!) They can also help with time management. For example, when you’re late for class (oh shoot, I forgot my stuff!), they can save you a trip, especially when your locker happens to be far away from the class you’re headed to. For example, if your locker is jammed and there’s only a minute before class starts, bringing a backpack can help with not only making it to class on time but also not forgetting materials that you need for class. On the contrary, backpacks hurt your shoulders and back, they can get lost, and if not at least somewhat organized, supplies will get broken and lost in there.

Sixth grader Annika Bhandari says that she prefers lockers over backpacks. “Lockers are just so much easier,” says Annika. “It is so helpful to be able to put your books away instead of carrying all of them around with you all the time.” Ella Bilir’s opinion on the subject was “I don’t think lockers are bad, I just think that you can still carry your most useful items in backpacks, like what you need for most of your classes.” 

Gracie Frazier, another sixth grade student, proposed the idea of using both. What would it be like to use both? “Backpacks are useful, but dropping things off in your locker, instead of killing your shoulders and back and sagging through your day with a filled to the brim backpack, is helpful. I like to grab my books before my first class and then before my next class I drop off those books and grab other ones, but I always keep my iPad, pencil case, water bottle and my folder with me.”

Lockers and backpacks both have advantages and disadvantages, but at the end of the day, both are useful for various reasons. Which do you prefer?