<p>I am currently a junior and right now I am selecting my courses for next year. At my school, seniors have the option of taking a period off. I really want to take an off-roll, that way I will have more time for homework, a job, and my sport: horseback riding. I usually ride 4 days a week and I'll probably start working 4 days a week. Riding takes up a lot of my time and since I plan on trying out for a college riding team, that is something I have to stay dedicated to. Next year, I am taking AP Government, AP English Literature, Honors Pre- Calculus, and Physics, along with a semester of P.E. and a semester of a photography class. On top of all of this, my school requires seniors to do a Senior Project that is quite extensive. You have to have a mentor and complete 30 hours of work towards it. I've heard some colleges don't like to see students take a period off, but with everything I have going on I think it would really help me cut down on stress during my senior year. Would it be a bad idea for me to take my last period off? And for the record if I didn't take an off-roll I would take another semester of Photography.</p>
<p>I’ve had an “off-roll”, free period, study hall, or whatever you want to call it since my freshman year. I was accepted to every single college I applied to.</p>
<p>I took a period off for my senior year, and got into every school i applied to. But, that was with 6 AP classes and no lunch period…</p>
<p>Take off, you’ll fully appreciate it second semester when senioritis really kicks in.</p>
<p>I have an off-roll period. I was also accepted into every college I applied to. I also have a difficult schedule of APs and college classes, though.</p>
<p>I thought about just taking an easy class to fill my off-roll, but the reality is that having that extra hour or however long to do whatever was extremely nice. I’m extremely involved with clubs like you described, so I usually just did everything for my clubs and ECs during that period and did things like getting transcripts printed and transcripts sent and all my college stuff.</p>
<p>But just to clarify:
To fill my off-roll gap (my school counts it as a 0/4 in your weighted GPA…), I took an independent study. So I have all the off-roll benefits of leaving campus early, but it doesn’t affect my weigthed GPA at all because taht independent study fills that period. Sorry if that’s confusing. But basically that’s my independent study period which just so happens to be off-roll. Although to be honest, very rarely have I actually done anything for my independent study during off-roll. I just do it all at home. But I did meet with my independent study advisor during that period about once a week during first semester.</p>
<p>Ok, all in all, it sounds like you could really use an off-roll period! The best advice I have for you is to talk to kids from your school who did off-roll last year. I did that and it was a huge motivator for me to take off-roll. I saw that they still got into the same colleges I was looking at so I felt reassured. Sorry that I rambled quite a bit, I hope something I said was helpful. Best of luck to you!</p>