My Senior Year Online by Corrine

My Senior Year Online by Corrine - December 2020 Scholarship Essay

I’ve often heard that students generally slack off during their senior year after sending their transcripts and application essays off to colleges and get slapped back with the consequences when the universities they were admitted into rescinding their admission status. I plan not to do that. If anything, during 2021, I will make sure I am trying my hardest and completing all my assignments. I’m going to try and make up for my grades from classes last year that I may have been able to handle better if I’d just worked a little harder. I made sure not to take a load of easy classes this year, knowing that colleges can become disappointed in the lack of core classes from an admitted student. Though, on the other hand, I learned from my mistakes last year and decided not to bite off more than I could chew and enroll myself in three AP classes again and instead, stuck with two, though I am also taking a dual enrollment course for English this year, so I am still taking three advanced courses, but I don’t have the same emotional weight from preparing myself for three back-to-back exams in May. These classes I took were all more based on my personal interest (politics, music, and English) and are relatively short, two-trimester courses in comparison to the high-stress, AP classes I took before that lasted basically all year and were more to boost my GPA than anything else. I’m glad I took the advanced classes I did at this point, but I’m even more glad that the amount of work and stress they caused me won’t be affecting me this year.

It seems like ever since my sophomore year, everything has been getting academically more intense, starting with me joining AP US History. The pressure has been on for me to try and keep my grades high and to study in my free time, but the overall feeling that my senior class is exerting this year seems to be apathy. It’s hard to listen when your education is on a screen instead of right in front of you in a classroom, where teachers can interact freely with students and organize physical activities to help kids learn. At times it’s hard to care.

I originally had thought this year was going to be a breeze and I wouldn’t even have to try to pass my less strenuous classes, and if that was the case, there would be no need for me to make this New Year’s resolution, but the academic slump that my entire class seems to be in is making it necessary for me to work harder. I’m starting to set aside more time for studying and homework now that my school and home life have seemingly converged. As soon as the final class of the day ends, I fight against the urge to watch YouTube or check social media and instead start my timer on my phone to spend at least ten minutes working on schoolwork before I go upstairs and get a snack. It’s incredibly easy to just turn from looking at one screen to another instead of focusing on more important and productive things I should be doing with my free time, so I’ve given myself an easy, quick task of just tacking on at least ten minutes dedicated to education every day and plan to continue with this when the new year starts.

Some of my teachers have even realized that and have started introducing the idea of having ‘critical friends’ into their classes where kids buddy up. The role of a ‘critical friend’ is to help keep their partner in check and up to date with reading and other homework. The problem is, not every person is equally dedicated to the cause of being a ‘critical friend’ and while this may help a little bit, a person can still lie or hold a high enough degree of apathy not to do their work even with reminders. While I believe this is a good system, the more important aspect of getting schoolwork done well and having academic integrity is having enough willpower to turn assignments in on time and to make sure to study before exams. This willpower doesn’t come from someone else, as the ‘critical friend’ programs indicate, but from individually deciding to listen, take notes, and turn things in on time and sticking to that goal no matter what, and that brings us full-circle to the creation of a New Year’s resolution. Through the rest of the expected online learning and the possible in-classroom schooling this year, I intend to not put in any less effort than before even if the environment in which I’m being educated has and undoubtedly will continue to change in the months to come.