At the beginning of every new semester, there are going to be hundreds of kids who want to switch their classes. Some may want to switch to a different period, others may just hate the class and want out. However, there is always a shared goal among the students who go to visit their counselors: to change classes
The first week of every new semester or quarter is by far the busiest week for the counselors. They have to meet with roughly 5-10 kids each day to get classes swapped and fixed.
Once classes do get changed, then the students have another problem they have to face. Depending on how fast their classes get changed, they could start the new class already behind. Some students get changed the last day possible, so all of that work that happened in the past week will be incomplete and put the student behind in the new class.
Switching classes causes chaos for everyone including the counselors, the teachers and the students. It is a disaster waiting to happen. When a new student joins a class late, that student is expected to catch themselves up and figure out what they missed. Teachers have to get them all the missing materials which also causes them to have to explain assignments. It can be quite stressful on the student who is falling behind.
Overall, it is a messy situation when a student has to switch their class to a different one. There are several possible reasons a student might need to change their class, however, if it is avoidable, it is better to stay away from switching classes to skip the complication of it.
According to Mt Vernon head of guidance, Mrs. Grimm, the first few weeks into each quarter are the busiest ones. “In August, we got about 445 student requests to come see us. In September, we got 334 requests. In December, we got 215 requests. Things pick back up in January, and we often get 500 requests.”
While Mrs. Grimm and the other counselors love getting to meet with everyone, it can get a bit overwhelming as there are only six counselors. Mrs Grimm also said that getting students in during these chaotic times is difficult, but planned.
She said that once a student fills out an application, the counselors have a 2 day grace period in which they try to get the student in. If an application is submitted on Monday, the student should be called in by Wednesday.
Hamilton Igunwe, sophomore, agrees that it’s chaotic to switch classes when coming into the new year. He switched the majority of his classes this semester, and noted that it was quite the long process.
His first issue was finding time to get down there to the counselor’s office to change them. His second problem with changing was that seats might be full, so finding classes with room in them was time consuming.
Unlike many students, Igunwe said that he was fine with waiting a little while to be called down. He noted that while changing his classes was chaotic, it did eventually get done and things went much smoother afterwards.