She is taking Spanish, there are non of the things you have mentioned. They have at her school ceramics, digital multimedia design, drawing, drama & choir.
I would assume that what would be the “easiest” course would be pretty subjective. I agree with others that the easiest might be the one in which she has the most interest.
DS just got his schedule for next year. It’s pretty much in line with the level of rigor from this year:
Honors English II
Honors Algebra II/Trig
Honors Chemistry
AP European History
Ethics II: Christian Scriptures (Catholic school has four year religion requirement)
Computer Science Principles
Honors Band
I’m hoping and praying and praying and hoping that he’ll be a little more self-directed next year and that I can micromanage less. It’s exhausting for both of us and doesn’t exactly help him with his independence.
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I’m sure it depends a lot on the kid, the teacher and the school. My D25 is currently in ceramics and is signing up for ceramics next year, it wasn’t too much work and more importantly she really enjoyed the non-academic class.
We had a week off of school last week, so did a bit of a trip that involved quick visits to 2 siblings and some other college tours. I’ll post a link here if anyone wants to read it.
It’s probably a bit early to be pumping her up for colleges, but I want to keep her focused on bigger and better things she has on the horizon, not on her hometown boyfriend who is probably never leaving town.
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We have something in common. AP World History.
This is my daughter’s schedule:
AP World Seminar
AP Bio Seminar
AP Calc AB Precalc-2
Hons Humanities 1-2
Spanish -6 (Needed)
PE 1-2 (Needed)
Choir 1-2(Elective)
Planning to try CALC AB outside.
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When do you recommend starting tours? This November we’re likely spending 4-5 days in the Salem area of MA and will have another class of ‘25 student with us. I thought it might be a good time to do an unofficial tour/look around. Neither my daughter or whichever friend ends up coming would seriously be considered for the super selective schools but might be fun to see what it looks like. My D is more in line with Wheaton than Harvard or Northeastern. I wouldn’t mind getting an official tour in if it’s beneficial this early and not a turnoff. We could potentially drive up another time just for tours since it’s about 6ish hours.
I think it depends on the kid, but I think they are fun, and give them something to think about. My D has struggled a bit socially, and it is hard for her because she is very social but just doesn’t really fit in at our HS. So part of why I wanted to get an early start is to give her something to look forward to when she feels like nobody understands her. I think she sees that her people are out there, just not at her HS.
I would keep it low pressure. We did a walk through Stanford several years ago, may have been summer before her older sister’s frosh HS year. But we did it more as tourists than as prospective students, we just did the self guided tour. If your D is interested, then I do think you get so much more out of a guided tour. It helps give them a flavor for what may be to come.
Personally I think if Wheaton may be more of a target I would do a student led tour there. You would see a lot more, and they help give a bit of a flavor of what the school is like. I know one student at Wheaton and it sounds like a great place.
Mostly at this stage I would just make sure your daughter is on board. If she is, then do as much as she wants. If she doesn’t want to be thinking about this yet, probably there isn’t any harm waiting until junior year. My kids all wanted to go far away (except the oldest), so we started early, because we never knew if we would get back to that place. Then Covid happened, so while D19 never got to see her eventual destination, she had been on a couple similar sized LAC tours, so she felt comfortable doing ED to a small school. If we had not done that, she may not have done ED. Both of her older brothers are at big schools.
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Thanks, this is very helpful and gives me something to ponder over the next few months!
I’ll echo what others have said and encourage her to take the one she is most interested in as she will most likely do better in the class.
My son doesn’t submit his schedule request until March but so far this is what he is hoping for.
Honors English
AP EURO
Geometry
Chemisty
Chinese 3
XC/Track
Lately, I’ve spent many hours on the phone trying to get an appointment with his old psychiatrist because he wants to try medication again for his ADD. He hated the side effects and stopped years ago but the rigors of high school are catching up to him and now he wants to try again. This doctor tries a food/supplement approach first which did not work for my son. I have no idea if for his appointment tonight if she will be willing to prescribe something for him. If not I will have to look for a different doctor, and these days getting any appointment with a psychiatrist as a new patient is really hard and there long waitlists. Case in point, when I called her a couple of weeks ago her first available was April. Fortunately she was able to make room for him last week and seems to be moving with urgency and he already got his bloodwork done.
In the meantime I’ve found him a wonderful executive function coach to work with, but I can easily see that alone will not offer him sufficient help. I’m exhausted from having to keep him on track, and he wants his independence. Its been incredibly draining for both of us, so I really hope things will turn a corner soon.
He did great first semester but it was way too much work for him and for me. Neither one of us can do that for much longer.
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Several thoughts on fine arts courses: First off, I’ll say that anyone who goes into scheduling trying trying to pick the objectively easiest fine arts course, yeah, that’s not gonna end well. Aptitude for the fine arts varies massively from subject to subject between individuals, and that means that if I were to tell you what’s easiest for my kid, that isn’t transferable to yours. (Like, for my C23 applied music theory would be the easiest by far—she’s the sort of person where if you shout out keys while she’s noodling on the piano she can effortlessly shift into whatever you ask for, and it’s been easy for her from the start. However, ask her to sketch something that looks even remotely like an identifiable physical object and she’s hopeless. For my C25, though, it’s the precise opposite.)
And fine arts courses can turn out useful. C23 was placed in a “throwaway” semester-long survey of fine arts fields (one of those where it’s a couple weeks on one thing, then a couple weeks on another, and so on) by her counselor fall semester freshman year because there wasn’t anything else that worked for her schedule—and that course got her to realize what she wants to do with her life, and got her excited about college as a means to that end. Before that there was not just no looking forward to college, but if anything there was negative excitement—and her (fine arts adjacent) field of interest certainly hadn’t been in her list of possibilities, even though I know her music teacher had mentioned it before. And even if it doesn’t give your kid a college major, exposure to something that becomes a hobby interest or at least something they know about shouldn’t be discounted.
(Also, C23 learned how to properly wind cable in that class, which is just a useful life skill.)
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If you don’t have luck with the psychiatrist, you may be able to get his pediatrician or family practice doc to prescribe them.
My son was diagnosed at 19 (online school was the thing that pushed him over the edge), and struggled at his college 1500 miles from here to get in to see a doctor of any kind during the height of the pandemic. We called his doctor at home, and he prescribed something for him via a telemedicine appointment. (He already had the psychological work up, just needed a medical doc for the prescription.)
It has been a game changer for him. Fortunately he has a couple friends on the same or similar medication who have helped him navigate the side effects. One was loss of appetite. The first day he took them he didn’t eat all day. His buddy stopped by his room that first evening and said let’s go get dinner. My son said he wasn’t hungry. The buddy said “I know, that’s why I’m here. Get your coat, let’s go.” I do think he would have struggled more without that.
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My first call was to his pediatrician because she had prescribed him meds in elementary school. She said beyond that class of medication we needed. to see his psychiatrist. He did have lack of appetite but the one that was more uncomfortable was getting depressed as the day went on and very anti social.
I’m so glad your son has found something to help him and friends along the way to deal with the side effects.
His dad and I will really press the urgency tonight if we need to. I hope it doesn’t get to that point.
Good luck. This is not my area of expertise, but it may just be something that your personal peditrician isn’t comfortable with. If the psychiatrist doesn’t work out maybe someone else would still write it. If he had a psychologist do testing at some point, maybe that person would be helpful knowing which doctors are willing to prescribe what you are looking for.
Again, not my area, just throwing out ideas to try to help. I know how much they can improve his quality of life, and I know how frustrated my son was waiting a couple of months after everyone agreed he needed meds but he still had several more hoops to jump through.
Honestly what helped the most is that the GP doc knows my son fairly well, and he also has sons with ADHD. I also know his nurse outside of work. So when I called the office to try to get in and talked to her, she knew he was pretty passionate about this issue and also liked my son, so he would probably see him right away and not make him wait a month for an appointment. So within a few days he got his medication.
Thank you, I really do appreciate the ideas. Fortunately the doctor agreed that he needs medication. The annoying part is her assistant failed to send a digital assessment she needs first, otherwise we would have had a prescription tonight. We are on the cancellation waitlist and she hopes she will see him in within the next 10 days, hopefully sooner. My son was so deflated which I totally understand so that was heartbreaking to witness. Heavy on my heart tonight.
I truly can’t wait for things to get better for him. I know those days are coming.
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We were thinking the same, but we certainly didn’t pull it off as well as you did. We live in the SF Bay Area and were planning to hit 4 local schools (that were representative of different schools, i.e. public/private, small/med/big). We only got one done (Stanford) and that was just watching a game there and an informal walk between the athletic buildings, the residences, and the main quad. It’s been a few years since I was on campus due to covid, but it sure was a walk between all those areas.
Late every winter, my state has a series of world languages competitions, with the centerpiece arguably being “poetry declamation”—each level of language learning (that is, C25 is in German III, so they competed in level 3) is assigned a classic poem in the target language, and they pick another from a list, and then they memorize both and have to perform them without notes and are judged on pronunciation, enunciation, and performance. (The assigned poem for German level 3 is always Heinrich Heine’s “Die Lorelei”, and from the list of options C25 chose “Spielzeug”, a frankly disturbing antiwar poem by the East German dissident Wolf Biermann.)
Anyway, the top 2 in each level from each school go to the district competition, and then our school district sends their top 5 to the state competition (lots of slots, since we’re by far the biggest district in the state and have well more than half of the state’s world languages students). C25 got 2nd place at the school level, then barely advanced at the district level (tied for 4th), but then won the state competition! So that was cool, especially, since they honestly did work hard to improve in the two weeks between the district and state events.
Extra fun: I learned while we were there that the state world languages competition is sanctioned by the organization that oversees middle and high school sports in the state. So does that mean that C25 can now claim to have been a state sports champion?
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That is cool. Congratulations to C25.
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Thanks for starting this thread. Wish I had found CC earlier and taken more control over S23’s course selections.
S25 was VERY anxious about HS and suffers from anxiety and adhd, so I did not push him to pick harder courses out of the gate. He began with:
H-English (only 2 tracks)
Algebra 1
Art (changed to PE in Q2)
Italian 1
Now taking:
Physical Science
Global Perspectives
Intro to Culinary Arts
Algebra 1, Semester 2
Next year it’s some combo of Italian 2, American Studies, Biology, Ecology, Geometry, Algebra 2, Health…waiting on teacher recommendations for levels.
EC: At school, just Ski Club. Outside of school, Martial Arts & Dungeons & Dragons lol.
Hoping to bring him along on S23’s college visits so he can start thinking early.
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Spring break starts today! And so of course we’re getting a full foot or more of snow in celebration of the turn of the season.
Third quarter grades have been posted, and the child is doing well, though continuing to not really enjoy school. I’m hoping as we get further toward the spring that that will improve, though—the child’s older sister has a really bad time with seasonal depression, and I’m thinking this one has a touch of it, too, just not nearly so severe.
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My D met with her GC today to select courses for next year. Ahead of time we printed out the request form and filled it out together so when she gets called down at a random unknown time, she wouldn’t be on the spot without a plan. After going over everything this is what she chose:
Health/PE (required)
Adv LA (0.5 weighted, honors is +1)
Adv US History I (0.5w)
Adv Chem I (0.5w)
German 2
Adv algebra II (0.5w)
Concert band (will be placed in symphonic after audition)
Digital design
Back up electives if digital design doesn’t work:
- Yearbook
- Ceramics
- Music theory I (0.5w)
We have block scheduling so will have half the courses the first 2 quarters and the other half the last 2 quarters. PE/health and band alternate every other day all year long.
To me and knowing my kid this is a really heavy load. Algebra and chemistry are going to be rough because they’re a lot of work with difficult concepts. History and LA is a lot of reading and writing which is tedious for her and she puts it off as much as possible. This is why she’s not doing any honors classes yet. She does love music and art so hopefully that balances it some. I’m not allowing team sports next year. It was too much for her and affected her well-being. She loves being active and likes gym so I’m hoping there’s an inter mural club of some kind she can do. Marching band is enough, it’s a year round commitment and added ensembles take a lot of time.
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