Timing is Everything
With the end of the school year fast approaching, what is the one thing on every junior’s mind? Work crammed in by teachers? Tests crammed in before finals? Finals? AP tests? SAT II tests? All of these answers are valid, but the one answer that you may have overlooked is the junior trip. During Memorial Day Weekend, which also happens to be the week before finals this year, the juniors will be in Boston on the annual junior trip.
Many of us look forward to our grade trip, but such a trip designed for relaxation and fun would surely be dampened knowing that upon returning to school on Wednesday of that week, we will be met with a slew of tests. Specifically, there are four tests scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday combined (not including the math test on Tuesday that we will miss while away, which will likely be made up on Wednesday: bringing the total number of tests up to five.)
Additionally, we will have little sleep entering into this short, yet unbearably hectic, week. The sheer amount of studying that must be done each night is only further complicated by constantly fighting to simply remain awake.
Personally, with such little sleep to run on, I find myself faced with a fateful decision to make Tuesday and Wednesday night: do I sacrifice my sleep by trying to stay up all night to study for all of these tests, or do I sacrifice my GPA by getting some sleep so I can focus on finals?
Not only does the timing of this trip prevent us from studying for these tests, but it also prevents us from preparing notes and other study materials for the fast-approaching finals. By the time we have a moment to catch our breath after completing five tests in a timespan of only two days, there will only be four days until finals begin; and we haven’t even had a chance to begin collecting our study materials!
When asked to comment on the situation as a junior himself, Donny Berlinger put it best: “Couldn’t they have picked a better time for the trip instead of Memorial Day Weekend and the week before finals?”
To better understand why TABC decided to schedule the junior trip during such an inopportune time, I turned to the student-run junior trip committee for answers.
Upon to speaking to multiple members of this committee, it did not take long to identify the heart of this problem: the students were deprived of any scraps of authority over many of the key components of the junior trip.
A member of the committee, who wished to remain anonymous, said,
“We were only allowed to plan activities during the trip. We didn’t have a say about when it would be, and we didn’t have a say about where it would be.”
When asked about the reasoning behind selecting the timing of the trip, one person familiar with matter, who wished to remain anonymous, said,
“[the scheduling of] the trip was made so that it would not interfere with AP tests.”
Although the scheduling the trip earlier in the year would have had the exact same effect, this individual did not wish to comment in response to this alternative proposal.
So the reason that administrators scheduled the trip during such an inconvenient time is that the students—the ones whom the timing of the trip would most affect and the ones who best understand the needs of those on the trip (themselves)— were barred from making any consequential decisions that would directly impact the matter.
Hopefully, the administration will take away a lesson from this entire scheduling ordeal: students should be allowed to play a substantial role in deciding matters that pertain directly to them. This would surely limit negative feedback from students concerning affairs in which they were given a chance to express their own opinions and viewpoints in a meaningful and impactful way.
