Semester Schedule Changes: Math Classes Dropped Most

By TRUE JARREL

Moapa Valley Progress

With the new semester underway at MVHS, the time to change schedules has now officially come and gone once more. Students sometimes discover they do not fit in with some of their classes, and the beginning of the second semester is a great time to fix that.

MVHS counselor Geniel Ozaki commented that math is the subject that gets dropped the most. But why is that?

Three MVHS students offer their insight:

Junior Logan Gollahon dropped out of his pre-calculus class a few weeks ago and reports that he has been much happier with his schedule ever since. “I switched that period to an open, and now I have more time to do homework for other classes,” said Gollahon. “My GPA has gone up since then; pre-calculus was bringing it down.”

Madyson Whitney dropped pre-calculus as well. Whitney expressed a lot of frustration at the difficulty of the course. “I went to a tutor, used Khan Academy, and asked other students from the class [for help], but nothing helped!” she said. “I decided I would rather not have the class credit than have an F on my transcript.” Whitney, a junior, now uses her free period to help her mom teach at the elementary school, and she says she is much happier with this use of her time.

Gabrielle Shiozawa switched out of personal finance at the semester. Her main reason for doing so was based not on the content itself, but on the time when she took the class: B1. “I learned a lot from personal finance, but I also have ‘senioritis’,” joked Shiozawa. “I had a really hard time being motivated to go to such an early class every blue day!” Shiozawa, a senior, added, “I definitely will utilize what I’ve learned so far from Mr. Watkins, but I’m so grateful to be able to sleep in now!”

It seems like the rate of people changing classes has gone up this semester, but, surprisingly, Ozaki says that there isn’t actually an influx of students dropping courses. “We normally have three weeks of schedule changes at the start of the new semester, but this year, we only had around 4-5 days dedicated to switching classes,” said Ozaki. “It’s actually becoming a lot more organized.”

Ozaki added that because students now pick out their own schedules, they understand how complicated it is to make a working schedule. “Applying that knowledge makes the whole ordeal a lot easier,” Ozaki explained.