Senioritis: Four Things to Ponder

Welcome to your last year!  If you are normal, you will experience senioritis.  Don't feel guilty about being sick of your high school, because...... it is normal.  In my 15 years of teaching high school (most of them with seniors)  I have come to not be surprised nor offended by senioritis.

By Richard Phillip Rücker (Flickr: Waiting for Time to Pass) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The thing I try my best to communicate to my students is that the senior year is really important even though it doesn't feel like it.   You need to fight through the urge to shut down mentally.  Here's some quick points to ponder on this year:

1. If you will be applying for the military, you will need to score high on the ASVAB test.  Score too low and no military for you.  How do you do well on the test?  Keep Learning This Year!
2. If you will be attending a community college, you will usually need to take placement tests.  Score too low on this and you may have to take high school level remedial courses that do not count towards your degree. Ditto any vocational colleges or programs.
3. If you plan on going to a 4-year college, low grades this year could cost you your spot even after you have been accepted to college.   This is one reason colleges have waitlists.  You will also need to take those pesky placement tests.
4. If you plan on doing nothing, then you may expressing to your parents the intense desire to be kicked out of the house as soon as you turn 18.

So there you go.  Just let all that marinate in your head.  Learning is a lifelong thing, so it is best to settle in for the long haul.

9 Benefits of Advanced Placement Classes

Increased Weighted Grade Point Average: (for C and above grades.) Colleges and scholarships want to see a high Grade Point Average. Some college also want to see your unweighted GPA, so it is important to carefully choose your AP courses and not over-commit. AP does not affect your unweighted GPA.

Level of Difficulty:   Colleges and scholarships want to see that you are attempting the most challenging courses available


By Shenandoah University (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]


Priority Registration: Impacted programs often register students with more credits first. This ensures you get your classes and get out of school quicker.

Increased Knowledge and Skill Base:  AP courses are challenging. This increases your overall level of knowledge and skills. This decreases the burden of learning future material in high school and college. It is kind of like a genius snowball effect. You learn more, which frees you up to learn more.This is why smart kids do well in college. They are coming to the table with more knowledge and skills while others are working just to catch up. Writing skills often determine the likelihood of college graduation and AP will help to develop those skills.

When you know more you will also do better on the SAT/ACT college entrance tests. Colleges and scholarships often weight this as importantly as GPA.

College Credit for passed AP Tests:  You save up to $4000 savings per passed test! According to the survey of colleges by the College Board, the average private college tuition per year is $30,094. Add in an average housing and meal cost of $10,000 and that AP test is worth $4000! Public schools, scholarships, and living at home will lower this cost and therefore the savings, but it is still significant.

Earlier graduation. The longer it takes to graduate, the more likely you will drop out of college. Each passed AP test shortens the time it takes to graduate.

Get to work sooner and make more money. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the average starting salary for a degree holder is $44,259. That is how much you can have in hand when you graduate a year early. This will also give you a year’s seniority towards future promotion, raises, and retirement.

Avoid those super-huge 100 level courses. You will have done these in high school. These are often some of the most difficult classes to get because people are having to repeat those courses. 200-400 level courses are often much smaller and more intimate.

Welcome to High School, What is Your Vision?

Let’s talk about high school.  I love teaching high school because that is where I feel the action is.  So much hinges on the decisions made during high school.  In a way I think it is unfair, because most kids have no clue what they want to do, but they are expected to make this decision.  Most college students are also unsure, so if you aren’t sure you are not a freak.  In a perfect world you would know your career and your desired major.  Then you would take the best high school courses to make the transition to that field of study more easily.  You would then choose a college and a major in line with that exact career.

The problem is a concept of vision.  Look at the picture below taken from inside a forest:

Now look at the same forest from a different vantage point:

You can see that the higher vantage point allows you to see how large the forest actually is.  If I were lost I’d rather have a view that allows me to see more.  Career identification is a lot like this.  As you begin to interface with the working world, you will begin to see the immense career choices available to you.  There are thousands of jobs you can do.  If you take apart any organization you will see this.  Did you know that McDonald’s employs statisticians?  In the same way, IBM employs day care workers.  How do you get a clearer vision of what you want to be?

One thing is to just start paying attention to what you see around you.  You have access to quite a few adults who do many different things.  Ask them about their jobs, what they do, what they like and dislike about it, the conditions, the outlook, and the best way to get qualified to do such a job.  As you meet adults soak up as much as possible and you will get a clearer vision of what may be your dream job.  You are forcing yourself into a better vantage point that doesn’t appear fast enough if left to itself.  It takes effort to get a handle on what is a good career fit for you.

Volunteering at multiple organizations can help.  One student of mine volunteered with a local hospital twice a week.  He got a real look behind the scenes and found out that he didn’t want to be a doctor but rather a nurse.  In addition, by working in many different wards of the hospital he discovered the exact sub-field that he wanted to pursue.  When he went on to college, he sought a college with that exact major.  He is going to end up where he wants.

Your high school classes are a good indicator of career possibilities.  As you take your classes ask yourself if you enjoy the material and if you are good at it.   Competence and enjoyment are two powerful indicators of where we should be going.  They are mutually reinforcing.  When you are not competent in your job, people complain at you all day long, there is less pride in your work, and you will not be promoted.  This will lead you to be unhappy with your job no matter how much you initially enjoyed the job.  We need to have the basic skills required in order to pursue a college major.  A person weak in math should not pursue a math degree, nor should they pursue a career that demands a lot of math.