By Zoe Weber
Many people tell you that senior year is very stressful and it sure is! First semester is probably the most stressful time of the year because seniors need to be able to balance school work, college applications, and extracurricular activities all at once. With managing the start of a new year, no student wants an insane amount of work that needs to be done on a specific deadline. Most college application deadlines fall under the first semester of school.
Submitting a college application is a huge weight on students shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, school is very important but college is the next stage in our lives and it is a crucial step for developing new skills and for personal growth. In college we learn how to be independent, we learn how to complete our own laundry, take care of ourselves and so much more. Balancing college applications is very difficult with the demanding workload we get from our courses . Nowadays getting into college is more challenging and which makes the college process even more stressful.
I am not saying that there should be no homework given to seniors in the first semester, but the teachers should be more lenient when assigning work and giving the students due dates. Many students are a part of numerous extracurricular activities after school and have made a commitment that does not enable them to skip the activity after school to work on college applications. There should be a period of time after extracurricular activities to then work on college applications instead of having to deal with the stress of completing homework assignments that are extensive and due the next day. Juggling assignments , college applications, and extracurricular activities is too stressful for seniors.
Teachers should be able to understand the stress and amount of work we have as seniors, since they had to go through the same process when they were seniors. I am well aware that many teachers are good about being accommodating to seniors’ schedules given specific due dates, but at the same time teachers need to factor in the amount of work that they give as well.
In a detailed email, Ms.DeLisi-Hall was able to answer how she helps her senior classes deal with the stress of applying to colleges as well as how she personally feels about giving students a lot of work and if she makes it easier for them during the first semester.
I deliberately structure the first unit of my all-senior class so that the lightest and most engaging material is situated while students are in the thick of the application process. Given the stress and time management issues most seniors face at this critical juncture of their academic careers, I plan class time as the heaviest cognitive lift, building independent and partner work time into our instructional periods.
The idea is to minimize, or at least decrease, how much work has to be taken home. Kids (of all ages– not just seniors!) already have so much to balance— academics, sports, friendships, family time, hobbies, interests, and personal down time. We have to be humans before we’re students, and social-emotional well-being simply has to be our first priority. After college applications are submitted, we do have to renegotiate our pace since SUPA is a college-credit bearing course, but students are ready to meet those challenges once there are fewer demands on their time.
Being leniant with deadlines wouldn’t be as needed to continue during the whole school year, it is just crucial during the first semester while college applications are still being submitted.
