In a school of 4,000 students, one can only imagine the amount of time it must take to organize everyone’s class schedules. Even with computerized systems, the amount of one-on-one decision making and time spent mulling over the abundant classes offered at LT makes course selection an enormous battle on all fronts. Alongside the sheer difficulty of picking out courses for next August in early February, the fear looms that one will be trapped in a class one does not like, for the ability to switch one’s schedule is even more challenging than reading every page of the Academic Program Guide in an hour. That is why it is unreasonable to expect students to know exactly what classes they would like to take the next year when they have barely begun their second semester of the current year.

As any person can attest, it is impossible to know where one will be six months from where he is now. The future is unpredictable, and it is a lot to expect from students that they know exactly what they want to take half a year before they will even begin the class. Particularly with students entering their junior or senior year, trying to intertwine the necessities for college admittance and their own personal desires into their course selection when many things are still undecided, can create a situation that is extremely challenging.

Take any student trying out to be on WLTL, TAB, or LION. Up until just recently these clubs/classes have been able to announce next year’s staff around spring break, allowing any students taking the prerequisite courses second semester a chance to demonstrate their skill level before decisions are made. As administration has moved the deadline for course selection sooner, these clubs have been forced to decide on their new staffs earlier, increasing the difficulty in achieving one of these positions if one has to take the prerequisite second semester.

Of course, one has to be mindful that an earlier course selection helps counselors, so that they are not bombarded with complicated schedules late second semester. However, it is important to point out that LT has a strict policy when it comes to switching out of a class, making it near impossible to switch one’s schedule around once it has been implemented into the computer. Although it might seem like the counselors are gaining an advantage by having course selection earlier, if they are later emailed by hundreds of unhappy students trying to change their classes, how much time is really saved?

As appreciative and grateful as one should be to counselors and really anybody greatly affected by course selection, it comes down to who the courses are for: the students. There have been too many occasions where students immediately regret their course decisions because they were unaware of some key factors in relation to future classes in February. As students, we need more time to explore our options and figure out what the next step is in our high school careers. We should not be expected to decide how we want to spend a whole academic year, when we have barely gotten through half of the one we are currently in.