Choose Your Class

Zhi Yi Saw

As Dalat’s high school students return from the summer break, many race to change their classes during the school’s first week to shape their school semester.

By the time of the writing and publication of this article, almost four weeks will have passed since students have been able to change their classes for the semester or year. Nevertheless, the events of that short first week remain incredibly influential on both the present and future of Dalat’s students.

To many, those first three days after the summer of 2018 aren’t enough to decide if they want to change classes for the semester. Sometimes, some implications or exceptions lead to classes being switched after the end of the first week, though this is highly unadvised. Two neighboring rooms are located in the lobby of the Dalat Castle. Both experience their rush hours from the students at the beginning of the school year by those who want to change classes or are looking for advice. One of these rooms is the high school counselor/Mr. Paul Dobson’s office where students can go for recommendations on what classes they should take based on schedules, favored college requirements, and other factors. The room beside the high school counselor’s office is the PowerSchool administrator’s/Mrs. Lydia Robert’s office. She oversees making class changes in the school’s database. She also sorts out the schedules, which can be made more challenging by requests to change courses after the first week.

In an interview with Mrs. Lydia Roberts, the PowerSchool administrator, she expresses her hope that students do abide by the general rule of changing classes only before the end of the first school week. She explains that “students should stop changing their classes after the first week ends because doing so after will inconvenience the teachers of those classes in planning and preparing for the semester.”

The reason for the rule of only being able to change classes in the first week is supposed to be both for the benefit of the student and the teacher. It attempts to prevent a situation of a student dropping into a class that has already begun, while also allowing the teacher to have consistency in their teaching plans. Most importantly, it prevents conflicts in the schedule.

It may be important that you know what you’re going to do for the rest of your school year, but it’s just as important that you actually start your school year.