Registration process for AP and honors courses can be misleading

Registration season has come and gone and now all freshmen, sophomores and juniors know what classes they will take next year. Many of them will be taking honors and AP courses next year and may have noticed they had to count how many of these advanced coursed they were taking. The counselors warn students that each AP and honors class will require an hour of homework each night. Many honors and AP students find that the homework load is far less than that. This single paragraph may just scare away otherwise able students from advanced classes. It also does nothing to prevent students from overworking themselves. 

The purpose of this section is to make students think through what they put in their schedule. It hopes to make students pause for at least a second to think about their workload. However, many students say that this doesn’t happen. For those students on the AP track, that little paragraph is just another signature. Sophomore Isabella Shradar takes mostly honors and AP courses, many of them above her grade level. She takes little consideration to counting out her alleged hours of work. 

“I honestly didn’t care because freshman year I had all honors, except for my one German class,” Shradar said, “I wasn’t really worried because if I really had problems, the teachers would actually be considerate.” 

Shradar also says that the claim of an hour of work per advanced class is false, as she has much less than that and her teachers give extended deadlines for most work. Granted, the “homework” that the registration refers to includes assignments as well as studying and reading, but often even that doesn’t add up to such a high degree. Tim Shipman, who teaches regular and AP psychology, claims to only give about two and a half hours of homework weekly, with most of it being reading. He believes that some AP classes, including AP psychology, can serve as an introduction to the advanced track and doesn’t think students should see these courses as scary. 

Even if a student is taking nine AP courses in one semester, their counselor can do nothing to prohibit them from it. It is, in the end, the decision of the student and their family. Counseling director Jenn Walker believes that counselors have a “moral and ethical obligation” to help students succeed and to help them do so in a way that is comfortable. They encourage that students take lunch or study halls throughout their high school career. They recognize that an average college student takes far fewer courses in a semester than a high school student. Despite this, many students eat lunch in classrooms. Many students don’t give themselves breaks in the school day due to the pressure to go above and beyond coming from society, family, and themselves. Some students will not stop pursuing the 5.0 GPA they want, regardless of a little paragraph telling them to slow down. Walker was right, saying, “Sometimes, kids don’t realize ‘this is a lot,’” but some kids weren’t taught to care.