Benefits of having trimesters should not be dismissed for semester fad
By Leah Pope
Executive Editor
Though I have no wish to be one of those people who’ve been around for forever and cling to the old ways, I have to admit to some unhappiness at the recent switch to a semester schedule. I’m really going to miss having the new grading period start before Winter Break – with first semester finals schedule for the end of January, I wouldn’t be surprised if the customary major end-of-grading period projects are all assigned over those should be two weeks of relaxation.
I know I’m not alone in saying I’m capable of having a short attention span – especially when it comes to classes I don’t enjoy. It’s infinitely easier to last one trimester in a class than to make the class 50 percent longer and just suffer through. Having also previously been stuck in a class with a teacher and students I found most disagreeable for far too long, I’ve come to the conclusion that even a trimester is far too long to be stuck with people who drive you to the end of your sanity. I can only hope that as many students as possible are well-matched in their teachers and classmates, not only for their sakes, but for those around them who must deal with the disconsolate. Though this particular downfall applies only to select juniors and seniors, it is significant enough to be worth mention. Running Start students, who until recently enjoyed the benefit of high school trimesters and college quarters coinciding within a week or two of each other, are now faced with an extreme predicament in scheduling winter quarter classes.
Their schedule of college classes during winter quarter now must be arranged to work with both their first and second semester schedules. Understandably, the district can’t run a certain way based on the convenience on a small subset of students. However, in accomplishing their mission of providing “a learning environment which empowers students,” the district might consider making in a little bit easier for advanced students to take classes on par with their abilities (i.e. Running Start classes). There are a multitude of other small problems attached to this change – the Drama Department, for example, can’t run on the simple one-show-per-trimester schedule. Because of class credit assignments, there have to be either two shows – which limits opportunities – or four – which constricts preparation time.
For seniors who are applying to college, their grades as of the end of junior year are effectively what they send in their applications. First trimester grades would be in long before applications are due, but first semester grades come in a month after the deadline for some colleges.
And then there’s the senior project. What would be 120 days of class time is now 90. Sure, it cuts down on procrastination, but really, who wants to do a project that big in such a short time?
Naturally, when two semesters replace three trimesters, students are given fewer opportunities to change their schedule. Therefore they have less of a chance to take a wide array of classes.
Another part of the district’s mission statement is “to maximize [the students’] personal, creative, and academic potential in order to become lifelong learners and responsible world citizens.” It seems to me that a breadth of learning in a variety of subjects would be one of the most efficient methods of creating responsible world citizens. Arguably, depth of learning is more important than breadth; that is true, but only to a certain extent. A person can be as well-informed in mathematics as they like, but if they’re oblivious to the rest of the world, then little good will come of their knowledge. I’m sure that in time semesters will be the norm, and few will even remember the good old days of trimesters – even fewer will actually call them “the good old days.” Still, it would do us all good at least to remember the benefits of a trimester system, and work toward incorporating those lost joys into our new semesters.