Senior Advisory

My College Writing Paper:

Charles A. Sprague High School is a unique school, in that it sports many attributes that are completely useless and/or ridiculous. Some of these qualities are trivial and acceptable. So what if the room numbers skip from 114 to 170 and then back again to 115? So what if the color of our water matches our walls? So what if our mascot is a Greek Olympian yet we have a Pantheon? These mere trifles are nothing if not amusing when compared to the relatively recent travesty that now graces the schedules of all Olympians, but only totally destroys the lives of the Senior Olympians. Sprague has a block schedule, which does enough to confuse students that are barely awake enough to figure out what their first period class is. Now Sprague’s schedule is so confusing that there isn’t really an accurate term to describe it! Instead of simply switching classes every day, every Tuesday all class periods are shortened and a new class is shoved unwillingly in. . .Advisory. It sounds helpful, perhaps advice is given! No.

The advisory class was designed and voted into being by a board of individuals that haven’t stepped foot into a high school in 20 years. The theory behind the advisory is to divide each class, freshmen through seniors, into small groups of about 20 and distribute them around the school and leave them in the charge of random teachers for 36 minutes. For those 36 minutes, the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors gain important knowledge about the SAT’s, scheduling, and earning requirements to graduate. The seniors, on the other hand, are handed “the folder”, full of either paperwork that we all filled out in our freshman health classes or paperwork that is completely foreign and confusing. We are then told “Go! Oh, and if you do it wrong you won’t graduate.” Do what?

“The folder”, the central focus of the advisory class, is somewhat of a curious oddity. It contains calendars, checklists, resumé building tips, and a variety of other unimportant looking documents, all of which are more colorful than the pile of vomit any senior would spew if they hear the word “CIS” or “CIM” ever again. Many of these papers look as if they could be useful, if they were needed for something other than toilet paper, but it appears that “the folder” is aimed at students that are completely helpless and will never get jobs, ever. “The folder” contains an immense amount of material and the less-than-immense amount of instructions on how to use said materials.

Teachers of the senior advisory classes are ill-prepared and uninformed. No need to beat around the bush, they simply have no idea what the seniors are supposed to be doing. They simply tell the seniors to fill out the folders.

“How?”

“I don’t know, ask Carlotta.”

“Ok,” *forgets/doesn’t care* It’s not that the teachers don’t care (perhaps), but that they were simply never told what to do. That’s fitting, create a brand new and confusing GRADUATION REQUIREMENT that nobody is qualified to administor, then punish students for not caring about material in a folder that doesn’t apply to their lives.

When the actual, physical folder is examined, one will find a series of lists, checkboxes, and blank spaces for signatures. The meaning/use of these markings is currently unknown, but many seniors believe that at one point they will need to get signatures for something. Nobody knows what the signatures mean, or if they’re part of the graduation requirement, but that’s typical in senior advisory. When one attempts to read the folder, they discover that every other word is an acronym, standing for God knows what, but still requiring a signature.

“What does ‘AJEBN’ stand for and why do I have to do it for five hours?”

“I don’t know, ask Carlotta.”

“Ok,” *forgets/doesn’t care* Of course, all of this is immaterial, because at the end of the typical senior’s 36 minutes of mind-numbing advisory hell, the folders go into a filing drawer, not to be seen again until the next week. “The folder” isn’t allowed out of the classroom, so they will never be signed, ever.

Advisor class is the epitomy of the useless Sprague attribute. It is a confusing waste of time that makes seniors almost more willing to not graduate than complete “the folder”. Should the seniors be worried about graduating? Shouldn’t they be actively researching what they need to complete “the folder”? Eh, who cares.