The first trimester, seniors struggle to balance regular workload from classes as well as college applications.
Seniors must balance classes and their workloads, afternoon activities, college applications, and their personal lives. This is a lot to handle and causes stress, which can lead to things like loss of sleep.
Seniors have a very large workload in the fall, which requires good time management and balance, some college deadlines being in mid-October and early-November add even more work.
Four-year senior Kiran Misra explained that for him, the workload is not too heavy at the moment, but he expects it to get worse in the next few weeks as he begins to fill out college applications.
“So far, it’s been tough,” he said. “Mr. Liebowitz described our AP Lit workload as coming in waves… I feel like a lot of [my workload] comes in waves. Some nights I have five things to do, some nights I have two.” Though he says, “It hasn’t been that bad. I think October will be really tough because that’s when I’ll start writing out my college apps and doing my supplements.”
October and November are particularly heavy times for seniors due to early action and early decision applications being due. Seniors need to fit doing their applications in with already busy class schedules as well as things like last minute SATs and ACTs.
The SAT is offered October 5 and October 18, and the ACT is offered October 26.
These upcoming difficulties will make life much busier. There are several consequences of this increasing workload, notably, decrease in quality of work. Seniors may have to prioritize college applications over homework as deadlines approach.
For the moment, the workload is lighter for some. As Kiran said, some work comes in waves.
Four-year senior Michael Saliba described his workload as being lighter than junior year.
“The workload’s honestly been a lot better for me than it was junior year so far,” Micheal said. “Junior year was horrible. I had eight assignments on every Sunday night due on Monday.”
For some, the first trimester is off to a lighter start than usual, like in Michael’s case. How long that will remain the case is yet to be seen.
As for what can be done about workload, English teacher Sarah Levine believes that teachers should be understanding of the variety of things going on in students’ lives.
“Students are people too, and they have other things going on in their lives other than homework and assignments just for their classes,” she said. “They have other assignments for other classes, they have after school activities, they also potentially have health things or family things or other circumstances.”
Teachers being understanding and accommodating to students via giving extensions, for example, would lighten workload and overall make the first trimester easier for struggling seniors.