Freshman year.

New campus. New teachers. New classes.

Like any student, I was nervous going into high school. I didn’t expect to get much help from friends when it came to locating my classes or which courses to take. But there was one person that surely wouldn’t let anyone down. My counselor, right?

So I trusted her when it came to choosing classes for my first year. I enrolled in Algebra 1-2, though I already passed the class in middle school. I enrolled in Integrated Physical Science, though I was ready for Biology.

Fast forward a few years. I’m a junior. I take AP classes, I play two sports, I am in three clubs. But I am still behind. The thing is, I’ve never failed any courses so why am I behind? Let’s rewind back to freshman year.

Since I trusted my counselor when I signed up for my freshman classes, I am now in classes that should’ve been taken a year before. This isn’t necessarily detrimental for some students, but it is frustrating because I never failed a course to wind up here. No matter how intelligent or dedicated someone is, if they are placed into the wrong classes they can never get ahead.

While my classmates are in advanced science and math course, I’m sitting with sophomores in a class that I should’ve taken last year.

I understand that counselors are very hard working, respectable people because of all that gets thrown at them. However, if a student is capable of being in a specific course, then they should be placed there. It’s not necessarily their fault if they had a bad score in science during middle school because if I recall correctly there were several schools where the math teacher was also the science teacher. Math was deemed more important that science. It was put on the backburner, as something that we would get to if we had time to.

No one can undo what has been done to the unlucky students who are in a similar situation as me, but it can be prevented in the near future. If a student hasn’t completely failed a course in middle school, then they should be able to move onto the next level in high school. School serves as a place to learn. A place that will challenge students to grow and push themselves. They can’t do that if they repeat a class they already passed.