Let us skip our non-essential classes

Graphic by Leyna Chan

Admins reeling us back from escaping to our cars in the parking lot.

OK, OK, OK. Before we make our core argument below, we know we must attend school regularly; it’s a state requirement for graduation, etc. We get it.

But . . .

As second-semester seniors, we find ourselves struggling to get out of bed daily — on top of still being sleep-deprived, school simply doesn’t matter as much anymore. 

However, second-semester senior year is a little overhyped: There is still work for college apps to be done, and there isn’t less work given in classes at all — in fact, many popular senior classes such as AP Government and Economics and AP Physics have harder second-semester content. We don’t have less work, we just don’t do it as often anymore. It is in fact a struggle to keep our grades above a C.

This brings us to the issue of class. We don’t want to come anymore. Thanks to all the MOSAIC lessons on mental health and the importance of sleep, we have realized we need to put ourselves first, and now is time to catch up on the countless hours of sleep sacrificed to finish the 20 pages of APUSH notes during junior year. As a result, we’re already routinely late to our first- and second-period classes.

Showing up half an hour late and still not missing much got us thinking. Are most classes really necessary to attend? In college, most lectures aren’t mandatory and most college students we know skip almost every lecture they have — especially AM ones! You could say that second-semester seniors are just trying to make the adjustment from high school to college easier by starting early.

In all seriousness, most classes we are forced to attend every day are “this could have been an email” vibes. If a class is just the teacher reading off a slide deck, we don’t think our attendance is that necessary. As long as the agenda isn’t something discussion-based or related to group work, or if there’s a test, skipping shouldn’t be frowned upon.

We’re probably going to do it anyway — many parents don’t mind excusing an absence on occasion, and some seniors are already in the process of mastering their parents’ voices for callouts to the office, but excusing absences remains a huge hassle.

Skipping class to study for a test for another class is already a very common practice here — the sacrifices we made for the grade were crucial to our mental health, so for the sake of our physical and mental health once again, please let us skip nonessential classes.