Archived News Item

Up Late

Senior year can be pretty unhealthy.

I mean, all of high school can be pretty unhealthy depending on how you structure your time and how many AP classes and extracurriculars you decide to take on. It just seems to me that senior year is when most of the all-nighters are pulled—when students just get so overwhelmed by college applications, trying to pull out all the stops for the last semester that really matters, and maintaining a decent social life. I personally have pulled more than a few nights in the past month with under three hours of sleep. And I’m probably one of the more relaxed seniors, who are applying to competitive colleges, that you know.

It just doesn’t feel to me much like an environment conducive to learning or health. I’m more concerned with getting an A in all of my classes than I am with learning anything from them, because I just don’t feel like I have the time to learn anything.

I’m not entirely sure where the blame lies on this one, but there are plenty of suspects. It could just be the inability of me and my friends to organize our time well. It could be colleges going overboard with what they expect on applications. It could be teachers not sympathizing with the workload college-bound seniors have on their plates. No doubt the answer belongs in part to all of those factors and more.

And this is the part where I give you my clever solution to the problem, but I don’t have one. I don’t really think anyone does—not a simple one anyway. My only idea is something that occurred to me when I thought about how complicated the whole application process and how easy it was to get confused by it. I thought that it would be nice to have a class devoted to filling out applications. One period per day (or even just one period per week) in which someone told us exactly what we needed to do on a week-by-week basis and helped us when we got stuck. But obviously this has many flaws, and is no real solution to stressed out teens. Maybe it's is just something we have to go through.

Senior polls were given out this week. If you’re unaware, that’s where Seniors mark down which students in the class fit into various categories such as “most perverse” and “most likely to date a teacher” and “most changed since freshman year.”

It’s what we talk about when we’re not talking about college. The senior poll page is a somewhat intimidating double-sided sheet of paper with categories up and down the page listed beside blank spaces for a male and female name. It makes me realize how many people in my class I don’t actually know. Sometimes you just have to fill in an answer because someone tells you they want it. It’s not exactly the most democratic system, but, hey, it’s all in good fun, right?

And in the real news:

• Laramie Project is coming up on October 21st, 22nd, 28th, and 29th. I’ll post more information as we get closer.
• Spirit Week is coming up starting Monday, October 17th. I’ll post a schedule of the days next week, but if you’re impatient, you can find one on page 3 of the Jacket today.
• There is no school for students on Monday. I think it’s for Indigenous Peoples Day (AKA: Columbus Day everywhere besides Berkeley), but the school is simply calling it a Staff Development Day. Don’t show up. Sleep instead. Or finish those college essays. Or start them.
• The C-building bathrooms still aren’t in working order, and the ones that are have been trashed. The boys bathroom anyway. I haven’t checked the other one.
• I’m still looking for people interested in helping to maintain this site. I need all sorts of help with it, which is why you’ve been finding the front page blank all too often and various pages around the site are still outdated. Send me an email at webmaster@berkeleyhigh.org. Almost any help is welcome.

— Harris