<p>How will missing the first month of school affect me?</p>
<p>I have a busy summer planned, and I'm thinking about not registering for school the first few weeks in order to do the things I have planned. I would like to go to Japan as an exchange student, which takes 6 weeks, as well as working full time at JPL, which would take 8 weeks. </p>
<p>Both of these opportunities are more important than school to me. </p>
<p>I am an excellent student, but I don't know how missing the first few weeks of school would affect me. This is my senior year, though. What is the school's policy for students that register late? Do I receive a blank for grades during that period? Do I need to make assignments up? I think I might be able to stay in touch with friends and finish up class work/studying. </p>
<p>I plan to talk to my school administration about this, but I don't know if I can be as open to them since they may not take kindly to valuing other activities over school.</p>
<p>Thank you, and sorry if this is in the wrong forum.</p>
<p>does not your high school has a policy that if you miss certain number of days you fail a class? Also, don’t you have to register this school year for next school year?</p>
<p>What about an excuse you are going to give school administration? You are absolutely right, your school will not take kindly on what you are planning to do. </p>
<p>I am shocked you are even asking this question. What do your parents say? Are they on board with this?</p>
<p>If you’re planning to take demanding classes in your senior year – APs, for example – weeks of missed classes/assignments/tests would be suicidal in terms of catching up/grades. That’s assuming your teachers and school would even allow missing a month in the first place. </p>
<p>Solution is simple: plan less for the summer.</p>
<p>Talk this over with your parents and your guidance counselor. If you do not absolutely need the course credits from the fall semester, it may make sense to just take it off entirely. It also may make sense for you to petition for early graduation at the end of this summer, or to arrange home-schooling for part or all of next year.</p>
<p>Other major issue is college applications. Most schools want paperwork into them by a certain date. If you decide to skip the first month of school, btter have all that down ahead of time and have someone turn it in. Each school is different and asking us is also silly. Onlyyou know your schools requirements. Most kids, even when sick have to do all the work and aren’t given a lot of slack, so can’t imagine this, but heck, if long term this is toward your life goals and if you can find a way to pass, and grades aren’t so important to your college, well, your call</p>
<p>My friend’s child missed a month last fall due to illness and hospitalization. It has been a nightmare all year for this student to try to catch up, even though she was excused from many assignments.
I cannot imagine the reaction will be very sympathetic when you tell your teachers that you just had different priorities. Yikes! I am guessing that you haven’t run this idea past your parents yet.</p>
<p>State law requires a certain number of attendances, missing a month for an EC would probably cause you to lose credit in all of your courses. For me, it would mean needing to repeat the year. I’m actually having problems now with attendance due to having so many college interviews</p>
<p>We can’t answer that. Only your high school can. You need to be forthcoming with them.
On a side note, where we are, even missing 1 week is a nightmare. I honestly would not recommend missing a month of high school. You will get plenty of opportunities to do things after high school. First semester senior grades will be very important for college.</p>
<p>Thank you for your responses. I would like to redirect you to the questions I posed. I realize the difficulty of missing the first weeks of school, although this may “shock” some parents. Please let me worry about catching up with the workload. If you have any information about making assignments up, registering late, or otherwise missing school, please post! </p>
<p>I originally thought that the assignments would be voided, since that is what happened to me when I moved to California from another state in the middle of the semester a few years back. I am reluctantly concluding that this may not be the case anymore. Would two weeks sound any better? I am a hundred percent certain missing the first week of school would make absolutely no difference (ahh…resisted using capital letters to bold words).</p>
<p>If you show why this idea “silly”, “stupid”, or “suicidal” in terms of my grades, I will immediately drop it. Please elaborate and give me some concrete evidence! (Anecdotes are not evidence.) Thank you!</p>
<p>If you are a strong student and can either make up the missed work- or if the hs allows you to somehow keep up while away- I think the JPL opportunity is rare and good. As for Japan, that could be delayed til another time, no? Which part is it that will make you miss the beginning of senior year?</p>
<p>arkbro- no, we don’t know if this is real, but I have encountered other hs kids in CA who have had ft opps at JPL.</p>
<p>Hi, I was just wondering what ft. opps stood for. Future opportunities? @cardoza–No, I will definitely be on the lowest rung of the “chain of command,” seeing as how I have no family ties to move me up. (Sarcasm)</p>
<p>wilsun, can you tell us what classes you plan to take senior year? And what your college aspirations are? </p>
<p>Why? </p>
<p>If you are taking light/standard classes, you are a strong student, and you miss the first 2-3 weeks, that is not likely a big deal. Because you are not trying to get into highly competitive colleges either. </p>
<p>If you plan to take all AP courses, this is a bad idea because you will miss learning how the teachers set up the class, expectations, and syllabus explainations. You may also miss out on joining study groups or project groups that are formed. </p>
<p>I am not sure what it is you want to do, but if it is “education worthy”- you can sometimes get a waiver for missed school days. And credit for the trip or project you are taking part in. </p>
<p>If it is really that big of a deal, consider taking the remaining classes you need to graduate as dual enrollement at a community college. You may even be able to get some of that done by taking the classes by virtual classroom through your community college. Most school districts also have virtual classrooms for other classes as well. </p>
<p>If you do want to go to a highly competitive college, and the reason you want to miss the first few weeks of class is because you want to work on your tan, that will not look good to admissions. However, if you plan to spend that time to improve the drinking water in Zimbabwe with a special contraption you designed, patented, and obtained corporate sponsors that are purchasing the contraptions for every family in Zimbabwe and you are going there to hand them out and teach the populus how to use them. Well…that may be an appropriate reason to miss the first few weeks of school. </p>
<p>Of course there are a few things in between. You would probably get a pass if you were going to be a contestant on Survivor or American Idol, but not if you were going to be a contestant on “Help! I’m on a Japanese Game Show!”.</p>
<p>If I were an admissions officer reading a file where a student told me that they had better things to do than go to school, I would think that student is ready for a gap year, but not for freshman year of college.</p>
<p>Ok you haven’t asked for our opinions on whether you should do this, just what the likely result would be.</p>
<p>To be honest, I don’t think that any of us can answer this.</p>
<p>Obviously, missing two weeks (or a month, even) is not academic suicide in all circumstances. Illness, family illness, death in the family, for example, would all be accepted.</p>
<p>There may even be other circumstances where a HS would work with you – let’s say you had a the best internship in the known universe but it would conflict with school. Or if you were an actor with a gig. However, I suspect that some schools might punish a student academically – especially, if this weren’t arranged in advance.</p>