The anxiety of finishing college applications comes to a close as you begin to discover fat acceptance packages left in your mailbox by the college acceptance fairy. The same dread that you once felt is replaced by sheer excitement, gripping determination, and nothing but optimism for the next four years of your life. And then you wake up at 7:58 a.m. on a cold Monday morning trying to get dressed so you can make it to first period if you sprint really hard.
Don’t get me wrong — sprinting’s good for you. But there isn’t a point to doing it day after day to go to classes when you’ve already achieved the goal of those classes: to get into college. I’m not saying that the entire point of every high school class is just to gain admission to a university. In fact, numerous courses that I’ve taken throughout my high school career were worth a lot more to me than the extra “A” on my transcript, but that doesn’t really matter for second semester as a senior.
I still value the knowledge I receive every day in class, thanks to some of the most dedicated faculty on campus, but at the point where I’m planning to attend college next fall, I don’t see the point of being forced to attend school. In my opinion, second semester seniors should be given the choice of either continuing to attend school or graduating early and pursuing other interests and experiences, such as internships or jobs.
After all, as long as seniors have completed their required 220 credits for graduation, why should they expend valuable school resources to take credits they don’t need? Instead, they should be able to take tests of academic merit in their classes, and if they pass those tests, be allowed to waive those courses.
Many students take courses they feel they have no interest in because they believe it will help them get into college. This isn’t a bad thing, so much as it proves the need for those students to be able to skip those courses once they’ve actualized the goal of attending a university.
In addition, high school, while aiming to prepare us for the realities of life, such as waking up in the morning and going to school, attending classes and lectures, and staying on top of homework and tardies, at its core remains a gateway to higher education. Even though some students may not feel that college represents their interests, they often find that they need training for whatever job they decide to do after high school.
In that sense, high school is a door to richer opportunities. Once a student has taken advantage of that opportunity, however, why must we keep the door open? Seniors often begin to misbehave during second semester or even come down with the lethal “senioritis,” causing them to chronically slack off in classes that they would have been extremely diligent in before. This not only hurts the student, but also hurts the teacher and in-expendable resources of the school.
For one, teachers have to tolerate raucous, arrogant seniors who seem to have undergone a transformation since first semester. The quiet, reserved, intellectual senior becomes a gaming addict in the middle of AP Statistics. The senior with a compromised immune system stays at home, sick with senioritis.
Students, additionally, forgo opportunities that may go on to help them even more than the classes they take in high school, by remaining in school second semester. Numerous internships in the computer science industry, for example, are on-site and require a full day of work. That’s literally impossible to manage with a full course load at school.
Furthermore, college and internships allow students a degree of specialization missing in high school. Although the existence of elective courses and classes in various fields alleviates the problem, most high schools don’t offer courses in database management or Nietzschean Ethics. Courses such as higher level differential equations and advanced music theory are missing in the curriculum, and this knowledge can be learned only by gaining experience in the field and industry.
It might seem like we have lots and lots of time for internships and jobs even after completing second semester, but that just begs the question of why we can’t use extra time. If a student’s passion lies in Computer Science and Software Architecture, why must s/he sit through high school level courses that are neither challenging nor related to his/her drive?
In the end, however, it’s important to remember that the decision of what to do after high school is extremely selective. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to colleges or disciplines. Thus, giving seniors a choice in the matter, that is, picking either staying in high school or moving on to the next chapter in their lives a little early, could make all the difference in making that experience more meaningful for them.