Should I retake a class that I got a D in?

Pre-College Issues Home Schooling and College
1

As a Freshmen I did not take high school too seriously and I got a D for a total of 2 semesters in two different classes, Lab bio and ASL. My schedule for the Junior and Senior year are going to be pretty busy but I would be able to fit in the two classes my senior year but I am hesitant to do this because I was want to instead take an addition 2 computer science classes or engineering classes. If I don’t retake the classes and instead take the additional classes that I am interested in, will that look worse than if I just retook the Lab bio and ASL?

Here is my Schedule for the my Junior and Senior year.(I’m on a 4X4 schedule)

Junior

Term 1
1.Introduction to Engineering Design
2.ComputerScience 2
3.Math Analysis H
4.Spanish for Spanish Spkers2

Term2
1.Principles of Engineering
2.AP Physics
3.AP Lang/comp
4.APush

Senior

Term1
1.AP Calc A/B
2.AP Gov
3.AP Lit
4. (Computer Game Programing?/Aero Space Engineering?)

Term2
1.AP Calc B/C
2.AP Stats
3.PE
4. (Web Programming?/Digital Electronics ?)

2

I have a couple of questions…what are you interested in studying in college? What colleges are you looking at? What do your extra curricular activities look like?

When I was in high school, I was into math and science (I ended up going to college to study mechanical and aerospace engineering), but more engineering than science. My extra curricular activities were super different from everyone else’s - I was working as a drafter for the fire department, I had a web development startup, etc. and all those extra activities showed my interested in engineering.

So, the few bad grades I got (mostly in Literature) didn’t really matter, and I ended up not retaking the class and instead chose to take classes that were more interesting (like Robotics). For my college application essay, I framed it such that I was exploring different careers, and writing was something that interested me…when I took Literature in high school, I realized that the only reason writing interested me was because of its ability to communicate ideas, and since I took other engineering classes, I realized that writing is not the only way to communicate ideas - engineering drawing is great for that too.