Second semester is here and most seniors can’t wait to be done with high school and join the exciting world of college. In preparation for college, seniors have to make a conscious effort to keep their grades up, despite a terrible infection known as ‘senioritis.’

Unfortunately for many, senioritis means stop trying to get good grades because senior year doesn’t feel like it doesn’t matters anymore.

Each senior handles this differently. Some students do everything in their power to try their hardest, some people have classes they need to take to graduate so they have to care about school, or some take ‘easier’ classes so they don’t have to try as hard.

Now, second semester is probably the most important semester of senior year. Seniors start getting accepted into colleges, but it’s also the time when the colleges can rescind acceptances because 8th semester grades weren’t good enough for their standards.

“I wanted an easier second semester,” said Bradley Fisher (12). “Woodworking, study hall, gym, lunch, and psychology [are my easy classes].”

Fisher is taking 7 classes, without lunch, like everyone else, and six of them are what he considers to be easy.

Fisher isn’t the only one who is taking classes without a lot of work load. Paola Pena-Soto (12) is also taking classes considered easy.

“They’re easy because I think the teacher don’t assign a lot of homework and there isn’t a lot of tests and everything.Of course you have to do the work, but it’s not as much as last semester,” said Pena-Soto.

Contrary to what most people believe, colleges focus on 7th semester grades and classes and don’t really about what classes you are taking, but rather what your grades are.

“Most colleges aren’t looking at the last bit of your highschool career, they are looking at the first bit, that’s just my opinion,” said Megan Udesky.

Udesky isn’t wrong though. Most colleges only look at the grades of 8th semester and don’t focus on the difficulty of the classes. Keeping this in mind, students take easier classes so they can get A’s in the classes, raise their GPA’s, and effectively raise their chances of getting into college.

“I think you can take hard classes but it doesn’t really matter what you get in them. What college see are the classes you are going to be taking. They appreciate that you keep up the rigor but they never see what you get unless you fail all your classes [second semester],” said John Powell (12).

Most seniors have these exact thoughts when planning their schedules during junior year. Some seniors focus more on taking harder classes so that they are prepared for college. Seniors such as Serena Dhaon (12) and Powell take AP classes so that way they can take college-level classes and be prepared for what they want to be when they are older.

“I am in AP Calculus BC, AP Spanish, AP Gov, and AP Bio,” said Dhaon. “AP classes are kind of difficult because they put you in the position where you have to manage things on your own time and you put in the effort.”

Based on a survey of 123 seniors, 43% said they are taking easy classes on purpose, while the other half are taking harder classes on purpose.

Most seniors decided to take harder classes so when they got into college, they didn’t have to worry about being overwhelmed in college. For those who didn’t take harder classes, they simply wanted a break before they got into the scary world called college.