ROHS courses

It's coming. It's approaching fast. It's Scheduling Day.

Oh the choices, the choices! Right? Or is it more accurately stated as the lack thereof...
It seems that we keep have less and less choices of the classes we want to take because the classes we are required to take keep getting in the way. As I explore my options I soon discover that I am very limited with my choices. Next year I'm taking a math, English, science, and history course. On top of that I am taking Choir and Spanish as my electives. So where does the school newspaper fit in or my art class? They don't. It saddens me a bit too because all of the hope I had that I could take the classes that appealed to me are being squashed right in front of me. :(

I obviously know that there are standard courses that everyone who graduates needs to take. It's disappointing that some people don't have enough space in their schedule to take a class they want and might ultimately help them in their job field. For instance, gym and health are two requirements for graduating. Some people get them out of the way in the summer so that they have more space for other classes. Others aren't so fortunate. I'm one of the "others". I had to take health and gym my freshman year along with choir. This meant that I was a year behind in Spanish. This lead to more problems my sophomore year because when I started to pick my classes I was limited to Spanish and choir again. Now of course, Spanish and choir are my choices. No one is making me take them. The thing is, most colleges want you to have two or more years of a foreign language under your belt before you graduate high school. My plan was to take two years of Spanish and be done with it so I could be on the school newspaper or yearbook my junior and senior year. I won't be able to do that now.

As you can see, scheduling is a very difficult and thought provoking process for a lot of students. Their futures depend greatly upon it. A simple solution would be to make the schoolday a 7 hour day. It would eleviate some of the burden of not having too many wanted classes and not enough class slots to fill. Now this plan isn't fool proof, and there definitely are some other alternatives and problems with it, but it seems like a worthy cause to look into. To help kids take the classes they really want to take.

Michigan During Winter

As you may know, Michigan is a state that is located in the Northwestern region of the United States. During the wintertime the sun doesn't shine quite as much, and it's rays do not shine down as strong as in the summertime. Simply put, we have cold winters. The odd thing is, it never occured to me how cold Michigan winters are until recently. I went out to start the car a couple of days ago and the car read that it was 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Maybe it's just me, but this winter has been drastically colder than previous winters we've had. It also could be that my coat isn't as warm as last winters'. What I do know is that all the harsh cold, snow, and bleak conditions during the winter are definitely not the type of atmosphere I like to live in. They also don't help with that fact that we still have about 5 months of school left, and most of them will be spent buddled up in the classrooms because somehow the room's thermostats lie to us.