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Many high schools offer different foreign languages for students to take. Taking a foreign language looks great on college applications (especially if you stick with it), and it’s neat how many different choices high schools can give you, including Spanish, German, French, Punjabi, and even Japanese. Of course each school offers different languages, but usually you at least have a couple of options to pick from.

Currently, Spanish is pushed pretty heavily in schools. The Latino population in America is always on the rise, and so many believe that learning Spanish becomes far more beneficial than other languages. While it’s true that learning Spanish might some more perks, if your heart isn’t set on learning it, then choose another language that’s more suited to you.

An official in my local school district wanted to eliminate all non-Spanish programs at the high school. This caused an immediate uproar from the language department, as every teacher believed that all languages should hold value and be taught, not just one. I was pushed to learn Spanish at first, but after deciding to learn German, I found that German was where the better fit with me was. Spanish is great, but you definitely should not feel like you have to learn it. Learn it because you want to learn it.

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Senior year in high school can definitely be a bit hectic. Even though you’re trying to enjoy your final year in high school, you also need to keep an eye on all kinds of deadlines to make sure you don’t fall behind and miss out!

Forgetting important dates in your senior year is easy

Senior year is a big year, and it flies by, believe me. If you want to make sure you leave high school with every loose end taken care of, it helps to have a nice guideline of what to do as your year goes by. While individual parts will come with their own specific dates, some senior events will remain constant year to year.

I’ve come up with this timeline, going by what events happened during my senior year in high school. Hopefully, this list will help you out a bit. Please let me know if there’s anything important I’ve forgotten.

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My old high school was one of the only ones in the area that had an ‘open campus lunch’.

Our high school used to be crowded, with around 3,000 kids. Our school wasn’t built for even two-thirds of that, so there was no chance of accommodating that many students at lunch time. As such, there was no choice but to have an ‘open campus’ at lunch.

An open campus allows kids to leave the school during lunch, just so long as they’re back in time for class afterwards. You could go anywhere: out to fast food, back home briefly, walk to a local store, wherever.

After arriving at high school from middle school, the thought of an open campus lunch was probably the coolest thing I had ever thought of. I remember my first lunch at high school, I walked to a local market and bought some food. I felt so grown-up.

With an open campus lunch, the big thing was always having your license and a car, even moreso than normal. Once you had both, you had the freedom to go wherever you wanted during lunch. Of course, once everyone else fond out, they would pounce on you like wolves to try to be taken out to lunch.

With so many kids leaving campus though, you can imagine the traffic around the school and the crowds at restaurants. If you didn’t skedaddle to leave campus after 4th period, you had to face enormous lines and risk being late for class.

But if you were lucky enough to be early, there was plenty of time to arrive, eat, and make it back without being late.

Unfortunately, eating out becomes expensive, as well as the gas to get there. By the end of my senior year, I was tired of wasting money and actually ended up staying around on campus a lot more. I was surprised how empty the campus was.

At one point, the school board tried to end open campus. A new high school (one with a closed campus) had been built that, in theory, would have lowered the amount of students enough that we could now accommodate all of us at lunch. The truth was that the parents of the new school complained because their kids couldn’t leave at lunch, so the school board wanted to stop receiving complaints.

But the students fought it like there was no tomorrow. We housed sit-ins at our school to show them how bad of an idea it was. Virtually every teacher and administrator agreed that it was a terrible idea. I spoke with the superintendent personally to tell her what a terrible idea it would be.

The school board held more meetings to ‘reasses’ the idea, and in the end, open campus won.

Having an open campus was a great opportunity as a student to learn how to manage money and time. Even though it was almost closed, students were glad to finally be seen as mature enough to handle themselves during the lunch hour.

Has anyone else ever had an open-campus lunch at high school?

In San Antonio, Texas, a school is trying out new ankle bracelets for students who have been caught ditching class or who have had discipline problems, it seems. The bracelet will monitor them using the GPS system, so authorities will be able to track where the kids are round-the-clock.

Students will not be able to remove the bracelet for up to six months.

This is terrible. What right does the school have to know where a kid is all hours of the day? Everybody needs privacy, and being forced to be monitored around the clock for something as tame as skipping a day of class is just pathetic. Privacy is valuable to everyone, and to know that someone could be watching you all the time just shows the sad direction we’ve been heading in discipline for some time now.

Not only is it a civil liberty question, this policy also won’t really benefit the student. What happens when these kids go to college or get a job? They aren’t going to have an ankle bracelet there, and they’ll be free to skip class or bail on work whenever they want to. The best way to help to start good habits about attending class is to create relevant punishments — perhaps they can’t turn in their work from that day they missed, perhaps they can’t take the test when they come back, etc. The punishment needs to relate to the class itself, and it should definitely not infringe on a student’s privacy.

The only time I can see this measure being logical is when the student’s whereabouts are a matter of safety to other students. As a punishment, it’s not at all effective. Along with making kids wear prison jumpsuits for violating the dress code, this seems to be yet another way to associate students with prisoners. Students go to school to learn how to be adults, not to be watched over like criminals.

What do you think? Is this going too far or is there a good reason to resort to GPS ankle bracelets?

The other day, I was reading a blog post how Texas schools are considering forcing students who violate the dress code to put on a prison jumpsuit. While that doesn’t directly relate to school uniforms, it got me really thinking more and more about the ever-continuing debate about whether or not school uniforms are worth the trouble.

One thing I’ve noticed about the school uniform debate is that parents tend to be more in favor of it, and kids tend to be more opposed. Being young, I’m against it. I went to a private school where uniforms were required from kindergarten right through 6th grade, then I went to public school where free dress was the norm from then on.

I have to admit, when you’re at a school where uniforms are already a policy, being told what to wear doesn’t seem like a big deal at a time. But if a school were to switch from a free dress policy to a uniform policy… that wouldn’t go over so well.

The school uniform debate is undoubtedly a complex issue, but here are some commonly discussed pros and cons and what I make of them:

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Every year before school would start, I would inevitably make a hurried run to Target to pick up all of the school supplies that I needed for the upcoming year. Binders, dividers, sometimes a new backpack, you name it. Each year, I had the same goal in my mind: “This year, I’ll be organized.”

I’ve always been that kid with the messy backpack. You could open it up and see tons of papers crammed in here and there, not at all organized. My binders and folders would be empty and unused, wasting space and adding to the burden on my shoulders.

Again last year, I decided I wanted to be a bit more organized, but I also decided that I didn’t want to fail yet again. It was time to decide what was going wrong and how I could finally be happy with my schemes. I took some time to figure out why what I was doing wasn’t working for me.

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Everyone always hates having that one class that has a summer assignment. Most of the time, it’s some AP class that wants you to read something and/or write something.

If you haven’t started already, then congrats on putting it off until the last minute. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, I’m doing it right now: I’m supposed to read Grapes of Wrath for my college, yet I haven’t even opened it. Oops.

Last year, I had to read 1984 and The Catcher in the Rye and write an essay about the two over the summer for my AP English class. The essay was due the first day back, and so many students didn’t get around to finishing it that they dropped out of the class before the first day even came.

Dropping out turned out to be a mistake for many, though. The next class down, English C (which was an honor’s class), only had a few open spots left, and they were quickly filled up. Everyone who didn’t get in the class had to drop to English B, a normal-level class.

Those who were put into English C soon found out that they now had more work. While the AP class had a summer essay, for the rest of the year the AP class had very little actual work. The English C class was full of busy work and worksheets. Of course, the trade-off was that the AP class was harder and more thought-based, but for the kids who dropped out because of work, there was a lot of irony when they found out they now had even more to do than before.

As for the kids who were put into English B, that reflected poorly on them for college applications. Instead of being in an AP class, they were now just in standard English. Some of them came back to AP English just because of this, but there was a nice big hole in their grades because of not doing the summer work.

So if you’re debating switching out because of summer work, think about it. I know how hard it is to muster up the motivation to do any schoolwork during the summer, but it could very well turn out to be an easier choice, and it will definitely reflect well on you for your applications.

A few of my friends who are going to be seniors next year have asked me if it’s worth taking AP classes during the senior year.

Now, my old high school always had us pick classes the year before, so we already knew what classes we would be taking come fall of the next year. I would imagine most other schools do it the same way, so by now you probably at least know what subjects you’re going to be taking next year.

But most schools also allow you to switch.

A good rule of thumb is to always sign up for tougher classes at first, then change out to an easier class. Harder classes are always offered less and it’s harder to get into them once they are full. Easier elective classes are plentiful, and you can switch between them easily.

So, assuming you’ve already at least signed up for some AP classes, you’re wondering if it would be worth your trouble as a senior to stay in them. The answer to that depends on your goals and what you’ve already worked towards. As I’ve said, senior year is important too, and so you definitely want to make the right choice.

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So you’ve finally made it to your senior year, and you’re a bit curious about how it will be different. I remember before my senior year I used to wonder how much it would be like the rest of the years.

More respect from teachers.

While every teacher is different, in general most teachers who always have seniors in their classes are more lax than teachers who have younger students. This is because seniors are usually more mature and able to handle more responsibilities.

If you have a more lax teacher, you’ll likely have looser classroom rules. Maybe you can eat in class now. Maybe it’s okay if you’re late every once in a while. You can use the bathroom when you need to. Generally, as long as you aren’t causing a problem, you’ll be given more freedoms. A lot of these teachers are the excellent choices to ask for a letter of recommendation from.

Of course, this does vary from teacher to teacher. Some teachers remain strict no matter what grade level they have. Don’t push the limit too far if you’re unsure.
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Short answer

Yes.

Long answer:

As I mentioned earlier, colleges primarily look at your junior year academics when making a decision about you. But that doesn’t make your senior year unimportant at all.

Let’s put it this way. Say you’re an employer trying to decide who to hire. You look at one person’s application and see that he was a great worker at his current job, but you find out that once he had the prospect of being hired by you, he stopped working as hard and kind of turned a blind eye to things. The other person kept on working strong, even with a decent chance of being hired by you. Who would you hire?

Colleges are likely to do the same thing. Depending on how competitive the school you’re trying to get into is, having a shorter day your senior year can hurt you, especially depending on what you do with it. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that the senior year in high school is the best of the four. Finally, you’re at the top of the tower and all of the lower grades look up to you. This is your last year of required education, and afterwards you’re free to do with your life as you please.

By senior year, you’ve probably already found your ideal set of friends and have made many new ones. Now that you have the traditionally tough junior year out of the way, be happy — senior year rocks!

So what’s so important about your senior year?

Basically, making the most out of high school. I can’t stress this enough. After this year’s over, this whole part of your life is over, and you won’t get it back. High school is awesome because of the balance between responsibilities and freedoms. You have more privileges than you’ve had before (driving, etc.), but you still don’t (always) have as many responsibilities like work and bills. If you’re going to be a senior, you’re already through with 3/4ths of your time there. Make the most of the last bit. Read the rest of this entry »