Most seniors jump into their final year of high school with a grudging yet eager attitude to finish the last stretch of their race to freedom. They carefully plan their perfectly balanced schedule and ready themselves to tackle the year. However, for some students, expectations failed when the principal, dean, and GLC’s walked into English classrooms to announce that their English class was nonexistent.

English IV Honors, a class seniors were told at the end of their junior year would be added, was rejected by the University of California. Although the English IV Honors teachers and several administrative staff attempted to rewrite a new curriculum to get approved, they were too late. English IV Honors students would have appeared to have not taken a fourth year of English, a requirement for UCs and Cal States. Thus, on the first day of school, students in the four English IV Honors classes were told they had to either move to English IV or remain with their teacher and take AP English Literature and Composition. A chaotic whirl of schedule changes for irritated students ensued.

Clearly, this was a careless mistake by whoever agreed to list English IV Honors as a class before approval. The cancellation of English IV Honors is unfair for those who move to English IV because they completed the summer work for no reason. Students who chose AP Literature must also do more work than those already enrolled. Although they do not have to read the same novel, those from English IV Honors must make up most of AP Literature’s summer homework. In the end, these students do more work cumulatively with the English IV Honors essays and several AP Literature worksheets. Perhaps the only benefit (or drawback depending on how you view it) to this unforeseen event is for previous English III students, who were able to slip into AP Literature through English IV Honors without making the English III Honors prerequisite.

The rash decision resulted in the premature availability of English IV Honors, and frustrating faculty members and students alike. Though mistakes are an inevitable part of human nature, it is imperative that something like this never occurs again for the sanity of GLCs and students.

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