As this year comes to a close, I find myself not caring about my day’s schedule.
Yes, gone are the days of worrying about what next year will bring. There once was a time where I feared what would happen in sophomore year, when (*gasp*) I had to take one whole AP class.
And gone are the days when I worried about the next day’s work, days packed with honors and AP classes that would destroy me with historical hub dates and little factoids about nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides if I didn’t stay on top of things.
But now that I’ve practically finished my senior year and can look back on how I’ve handled my class schedules for the past nearly half decade, I notice that now my days are a rinse and repeat cycle of yapping with friends, waiting for the bell to ring, and going home early.
With this in mind, I’d like to share with my (not for much longer) fellow students about how they can attain a slovenly senior schedule like mine.
To start, let me just set the scene of what a day looks like for me. Let’s choose an even day, because do you think this newspaper is funded well enough to pay for a description of the odd day as well?
I first show up to second period, which is novel teacher Anatoly Alexeeff’s class. A sizable chunk of the period will be spent waiting for all the other late senioritis-sufferers to drag themselves through the door.
Then, as Alexeeff engages with us and stimulates the class with thoughtful questions and short games to prime us for the actual material, the apathetic senior zombies are radio silent, and most of them look longingly at their phones (that man is a saint for the patience he has with us).
This apathy is by no means unique to the novel classroom.
After, I go to newspaper for my fourth period. Now, newspaper certainly is the best class in all of Cal, but even the most diehard journalist among us won’t spend the entire period getting the big scoop. In reality, most time will be spent yapping as the editor in chief runs around the room trying to get people to do their work.
And I don’t pretend I’m not part of the problem; I turned in the drafts for this story late.
Finally, I stay for lunch to play a few rounds of Brawlstars with the guys and then go home because I have no sixth period.
You may be asking yourself, “How do I get a lazy schedule like this for my senior year?”
Well, I’ll tell you the first secret, and it’s to get the hard stuff done first. Yes, yes, it’s unfortunate, but if you want a shot at a good college you’ll still need some decent academics, and it’s not like you don’t have three years before your final cruise through Cal.
So, sophomores, be sure to grind out that AP Calculus AB, and both sophomores and juniors should do their year’s respective AP history classes. Sophomores should take Honors/AP Chemistry, and juniors should not fear physics. If you have done all these things, you’ll have a good shot at a top notch college and still be free to tune out your senior year teachers desperately just trying to do their jobs, because trust me, you WILL lose motivation.
This idea of planning your earlier high school years in just the right way doesn’t only extend to what you’re doing during the actual year itself. Instead, you may want to take a page out of your parent’s playbook when you were doing sixth grade math in the summer before your first year of middle school and jump classes with summer courses.
“If you take courses over the summer, you could maybe have a period off,” said senior Matthew Malfatti, a fellow enjoyer of a slothful schedule.
As one who has both accelerated during the summer and taken a period off for two years, Malfatti is absolutely correct here. Nothing beats the joy of going to bed at night and remembering you’ll get to leave two hours earlier than usual the next day.
In another use of summer courses to achieve the ideal schedule, I have a quick anecdote. I have a friend (who is certainly NOT our wonderful editor in chief) who, on more than one occasion, used his summer to take a social studies course to get credits for history on his transcript, letting him skip all of his high school history classes.
Now, this was not due to his desire to take a lazy schedule (no one works harder than him), but more likely due to his lack of affection for how history is taught in a classroom. The point is illustrated regardless.
And, if you’re only interested in clearing requirements so you can go home early, keep in mind that can only happen every other day, as you can only have one period off.
But Malfatti offers a simple solution for those so inclined.
“Skip class. It’s a lot easier,” he said.
For legal reasons, I am obligated to inform you that you shouldn’t take his advice seriously.
But there’s more than one perspective about how to make school easy when senior year comes around. Senior Trevor Chacon said students, of course, won’t be wanting to overload their senior year if they want a free ride.
“There’s certain teachers,” Chacon said. “If you know, you know. Like, I’m not going to expose anyone, but, I mean…”
I can certainly second Chacon’s opinion here. I too won’t be snitching on anyone, but it’s an open secret which classes will help ease your schedule and which ones won’t.
All I have to say is extra disciplinary measures are certainly a good idea in those classes to force students to pay attention and actually learn something…which is why they should be implemented next year with a new class of students.
Whether you’re looking for a free period, easy classes, or a quick lifehack to be able to avoid school entirely, I hope the advice of myself and fellow seniors will be helpful for your future high school endeavors.
