Only three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and the bottomless line outside the counseling office at the beginning of every year. You would have better luck finding a functional bathroom during the passing period than you would getting into that office during the first week of school. The annual scheduling rush is so ingrained in Tam history that we might as well have a week off for it.
But this isn’t how it should be, for both students and counselors alike. The question is raised: why are we still dealing with the exact same issues, year after year? Is something slipping beneath the cracks on an executive level? Or are we, as students, getting harder to manage?
The list of typical scheduling ailments includes everything you might expect: incorrect classes, dropped periods, missing graduation requirements, and overlapped class times.
“I wanted to get into [Calculus BC], which I wasn’t able to, and I’m surprised it was an issue this year because it was also an issue last year. I know a ton of kids didn’t get in that wanted to,” senior Oliver Lucchese said.
For Lucchese as well as many others, it’s not just about the class, but what lies beyond.
“[Not getting into Calculus BC] will definitely affect my chances of getting into college because I’m going into engineering and they definitely want to see that you’ve taken Calculus BC, so it’s definitely not helping me there,” Lucchese said.
As seniors and students, the pressure to choose is nothing new. When we were freshmen and sophomores, the cycle of high school progress was dictated by the friends we made, where we sat for lunch, and what teachers we sucked up to. When junior year dawned, we picked our poison in the form of AP classes and studied until our brains collectively melted into a pile of pink amorphous goo. For many students, our class choices were meant to showcase our talents and interests, through high school and beyond.
But when schedules fall out of order, students are often denied courses that represent their interests, especially when these classes aren’t required to graduate.
“I was let down when I didn’t see [the short story and poetry class] on my schedule,” senior Charly Kerr said. “As a creative writer and songwriter I was enthusiastic to take a class that would boost me into a creative writing college major.”
However, students often don’t have the full picture. When it comes to creating the yearly schedule, there are innumerable moving parts to the process.
Tam counselor Cheryl Lua lists a few contributing factors, including student requests, full classes, overlapping periods, and “singletons,” which are single period classes that can overlap with other requested classes. A prevalent issue is filling up underfilled classes and cutting down on overfilled ones.
“We’re not going to have a class for nine students. We need to have full classes, or full-ish.” Lua said.
Lua reinstates the importance of balance, especially when it comes to realistic expectations. With a school as large as Tam, it would be nearly impossible to schedule every student with the classes they request.
“So there is actually a lot that goes into a master schedule, and it’s never perfect, but this year was really, really bad,” Lua said.
As the school year begins, it’s important to understand that we don’t see the full process when it comes to scheduling. While missing out on a class can be disappointing, it’s not all on the administration. At the end of the day, we’ve got graduation requirements and even bathrooms we can use sometimes. What more could a Tam student dream of?