With little-to-no context, a “Grade Course Request Form” pops up on your Canvas Dashboard. After this appears, many questions come to mind. Why are we deciding our classes so early in the year? Is this our only opportunity to choose classes? Are we going to get any information or guidance before we make several extremely important decisions?
Counselors attempt to reduce confusion by visiting English classes in order to assist students in the process of completing the course selections. They come to classes for about 50 minutes. Seems like enough time right? Nope. Surprisingly, the process of selecting core classes and electives, as well as providing school information (name, student id, etc) takes longer than the 50 minutes that it’s expected to. From the stress, to the indecisiveness, to the time in which you completely zone out when the counselors are saying something important extends the time significantly.
After being guided through all the basic information in the beginning of the form, you then move on to core class selections. Even though most of the classes are already decided for you, the entirety of the process takes an excruciating amount of time.
To choose electives, you are given a list of all the classes you can take next year. There are a lot of words. The first page includes all the core classes and electives. The second is the academies. Over 100 options in total.
Ranging from full credit to half credit, you need to create a combination of classes to equal four credits in total, leaving you with eight extremely important decisions to make. You need to choose which languages, academies, four main electives, and alternatives (in case you don’t get your first picks) that you want to take.
Finally, you come to the actual decision-making part of the form. No consideration to whether you misclick or type something wrong; that’s a problem for you next year. You start to panic. What should you choose? You take a look throughout the classroom. Everyone is in complete disarray. At least you’re not the only clueless one. With no information on any of these classes or how they will impact you in the future, you start the selection process.
If you’re like me, halfway through you realize that you forgot to include your academy leaving you with only one and a half credits to fill. You raise your hand and ask your counselor which classes will look better for college. The response you get is said in irritation. She goes on to say how you need to have autonomy over the classes that you want to take and how in college you have to make several decisions without the assistance of others. Ok yes, I understand that, but how am I supposed to make an important decision without any previous information on the topic given to me throughout the entire school year? There have been many meetings with counselors discussing classes, extracurriculars, and academies. However, none about this topic. I honestly don’t understand.
Throughout the rest of the day, you ask your friends, teachers, and family members about which classes to take and of course, they all have their opinions, not necessarily helpful. After weighing the positives and negatives of all the classes, you open up the form again and start to type in your final answers. Time elapsed: 1,646 minutes. You take a deep breath and click submit. You reflect on your decisions, and immediately start regretting them, but you put your worries aside because you know that the process to change your classes is unbearable.
But how is that fair? Why are students being forced to make important decisions without little to no information on the subject? Not knowing information on the classes that you are committing a full half year or year to leads to a high probability of students not getting what they expected in class which leads to students wanting to drop out of their classes and therefore decreasing interest in school.
Perhaps having sessions or events where teachers explain all the classes available for the new coming students will help with all the nerves and stress associated with picking classes. Ultimately, just having an organized system each year that helps students choose their classes for the next year will help with the stressful experience that students face continuously every year of high school.