Twice every year, students find themselves in a position when they need to visit their counselor and make the choice of what kind of classes they are going to take in the next semester. When thinking of the classes you want to choose, you should take into consideration a couple of things. How will this class help me achieve my goals and help me graduate high school? Will it help me with meeting the A-G requirements and any other type of requirements that I need to accomplish before I complete high school? Do I want to challenge myself and try an AP or just do an elective?
These are all very much needed questions to ask yourself when it comes to choosing classes. Because everything you do now affects your future. For example, let’s imagine two people: one of them is determined to make sure they accomplish every requirement, and the other is just going with the flow. The one who is trying to accomplish every requirement is taking college classes to help them with making sure they have more room in their schedule and able to do more extra curricular activities, not only during the school year, but during the summer too.
While for the other person they aren’t really taking it seriously and think that they can do everything without needing to do all of the work the first person is doing, which really differentiates them from one another. By the time senior year comes around, the person who is most likely to just have filler classes is the person who won since they finished all their requirements before senior year came around.
Having professional help is also really important; you should always make sure to talk to your counselors when you have any questions or just need help, they are there as support to students.
“One of the most important things is to find the balance and challenge since it is really important to. Finding that fine balance between challenges and work load like honors and aps but it wouldn’t help if they’re getting Ds or Fs,” said counselor Lourdes Gracia Meza.
In short what she is trying to say is that you should be finding the balance between challenges and work load since you should challenge yourself but also make sure you are able to handle the work load being given with the challenges.
“Identify your strengths and challenge yourself. Find your strengths and weaknesses so you can strengthen them. Be mindful of work load and be on top of grades and assignments. C’s for college and D’s are for diplomas. Strive for C’s or higher,” said counselor Ernesto Morales.
This is something I find really important because you always want to have your strengths known and weaknesses too, so that you’re able to strengthen them even more to become stronger and better not only academically but also for yourself and your future.
You always want to make sure you’re going above and beyond and take up as many opportunities as you can, but something to note is that you want to make sure that what you’re doing is something you have a personal connection with, not just something you’re doing just because you want your college resume to look amazing. Because no matter how good your resume is, colleges are looking for commitment and someone who they believe would bring them good and new skills.
“A-G requirements are the minimum so you wanna challenge yourself for the maximum. Besides academic courses chosen you want to partake in clubs, sports and actively strive for high roles and prepare yourself for all state exams and work on time management and consider scholarships and internships. Be present and have fun,” said Morales.
This is a great example because of how it really demonstrates that even though there are requirements, you should go beyond them so that it can give you a better chance of standing out during college recruitment.
