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Appropriate junior year workload?


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My kids are just freshman, but they’re looking ahead to next years courses and electives and such.  I have heard many times that junior year is a bear for kids; just so tough and so much work.  Is that because they overload with too many courses?  Too many AP classes?  Stressing for college? Please help me understand this before it happens.

mine are in private b&m for high school.  Minimum 27 credits to graduate and broken out by 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 6.5 credits for Freshman through Senior year.  That seems reasonable.  But, then they offer ‘overload’ credits with cool sounding (but hard/advanced) courses.  How much is too much?

They are already taking Geometry/Algebra 2 and AP Human Geography as freshman.  They can take Precalculus this summer if they want. But then they’ll be in Calc AB as sophomores??  That seems rough.  

I want them challenged. But not stressed.  I want them to enjoy high school and the journey.  This is all so much different than my high school options 40 years ago!

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If they can knock out a core class in the summer (maybe not math as you don't want to go a full year without doing math) in order to be able to cut back a little and do one of these fun but challenging courses without getting completely swamped might be a good strategy.

It's... rough. But I'm not totally sure what can fix it for kids other than simply not going to b&m schools.

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I’m afraid that junior year is real.  I was hoping we could somehow ignore it, and it would go away!

I think you will find that your student will largely be taking the lead by junior year.  I’m not sure that even homeschooling can be a panacea for the pressure. I have a child taking four online AP classes and a couple of dual enrollment at the CC because he felt the need to add more.  All this, in addition to what I require for my home brewed classes.

This type of pressure and pace was not my plan for him, but it is his choice.  Unfortunately, he has big dreams.  This is the path he has chosen to travel.  High school juniors are 17, and are almost adults.  They will choose how they want to tackle the year.

I could never have put in the study hours, volunteer work, time for sports, etc. that my child does.  He would never NOT spend his time this way.  That said, none of this was in my picture his freshman year.  

Plan loosely.  It’s a wild ride.  But it is oh, so fun to watch them become independent!  

 

Edited by Hadley
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I did forward my kids a link in a pinned post to college confidential.  A disappointed kid who took 16 AP, excelled in everything, high scores, tons of major extracurricular and leadership blah blah, and didn’t get into her top choices.  I just want mine to understand that jumping through hoops doesn’t mean they’ll get what they want. And there may be a different, gentler path.

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41 minutes ago, matrips said:

I did forward my kids a link in a pinned post to college confidential.  A disappointed kid who took 16 AP, excelled in everything, high scores, tons of major extracurricular and leadership blah blah, and didn’t get into her top choices.  I just want mine to understand that jumping through hoops doesn’t mean they’ll get what they want. And there may be a different, gentler path.

Let them read the intro to that Cal Newport book. I don't think he's the be all end all (and for sure, the students he talks about there are exceptional in other ways that a kid may not be able to reach) but it does help frame it differently, I think. When kids see 16 AP's, great GPA, still not into top choices, I think it just makes them feel like they have to double down.

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1 hour ago, matrips said:

I did forward my kids a link in a pinned post to college confidential.  A disappointed kid who took 16 AP, excelled in everything, high scores, tons of major extracurricular and leadership blah blah, and didn’t get into her top choices.  I just want mine to understand that jumping through hoops doesn’t mean they’ll get what they want. And there may be a different, gentler path.

I didn't know whether to respond here or on the college forum.  @teachermom2834 touched on this in her post on the college forum.

Far too many kids get caught up in the "college dream."  The go through contortionist acts trying to be something that they think will attract the attention of adcoms vs. pursuing what really interests them.  Being in a school system locks them into even more rigidity and more of a "one and only one right path" mentality.

As a parent, probably the most important thing you can do is to start talking now about how which college you attend does not define you.  Frank Bruni's book Where you go is not who'll be is a good place to think this through.  Know your budget.  Start defining parameters now.   It is the HYPE (and oh my, that is what it is more than anything else) surrounding college admissions the permeates down through high school and makes kids think that their life is over if they don't attend XYZ dream school.

If they recognize that their path toward adult can be launched from MANY regular old places, it deflates the mania. If they can recognize the falsity of the premise that only on certain campuses can they receive a good education or be surrounded by peers or get certain jobs or into certain grad schools, etc,  then their stress levels should be minimal.

 

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I have a junior. It’s a tough year, even homeschooling. Pretty much all the juniors I see as patients are crazy stressed.

It’s partially workload. It’s also starting to think about college. For my son it’s also a bunch of other added things...he is taking driver’s ed, he is trying to get a certificate to enable him to have a certain job for the summer, he said yes to a staffing/leadership position within Scouts (that is taking up multiple weekends), he is thinking about swimming in college so having to negotiate writing to coaches, he has other fun thing he wants to do, there are social pressures. It’s an increase in responsibility on all levels. On the flip side...I see him rising to those challenges. He’s stressed a little but he’s also thriving. So it can be a really exciting time. 

I think there is also some degree of stress involved in coming towards the point of a big change in your life...ending high school. People put so much emphasis on the whole college search process and what you will do and it seems like this make or break point. We’ve tried really hard not to do that and I think our son isn’t too worried about where he will go. Our emphasis has been that there are so many good schools and there is one that will be a fit for him. And we’ve talked a lot about fit (financial, personal, academic) over reputation of the schools. But there is some stress just in the uncertainty aspect of it all. 

I just asked my son why he thinks junior year is stressful and he said “because everyone else makes it stressful.” 😀

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Thanks, it’s giving me some things to think about and look up. We had a good talk today about what his tentative plan was for the rest of high school, just so he could make sense of did he really need to rush stuff.

one thing that I think may be helpful is that we live in Florida and they’ll have access to the bright futures scholarships.  So there is a huge financial incentive to go to a state school in Florida and graduate mostly debt free, which would also narrow down college choices tremendously.

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