Finally, the end of the school year!

Danielle Ryan

(6/2010) What is on every teen’s mind at this very moment? The end of the school year and the arrival of summer! Yes, the end of the school year has finally arrived. Every teen across America is probably thinking about this very thought right now. By this time most kids are itching to get out of school. We have become tired and bored of sitting in school and learning. The routine has become too monotonous for most teens. For the whole school year I have had the thoughts of summer and what it could bring in the back of my mind. For the last couple of weeks, however, I have thought nothing else other than that of being out of school finally and having the summer all to myself.

The arrival of summer can’t be perfect though. There are some undesired aspects that come along with the arrival of summer. One of the unfortunate things that come with the arrival of summer is that school seems to become hastened and much faster paced. For the last month or two of school the teachers love to cram as much material into our brains as possible.

It sometimes seems as if we are taught more information in the last month or two of school than we are taught in four months of school. Labs, packets, vocabulary, worksheets, and homework come to us all in a hurry. Even worse, the teachers seem to assign all of these assignments to be due on the same exact day with an occasional day or two space in between. The last two weeks of school bring about several tests a day and, of course, the infamous final exams.

Final exams always seem worse than the midterm exams. This is probably due to the fact that some finals are cumulative, meaning that we are tested on all of the information that we learned throughout the year. Another reason that finals may seem worse is that midterms don’t excite most people. They only cover material from one semester and people generally just don’t get too concerned about them. Finals, on the other hand, tend to make people more anxious. They cover more material, and like I said, a good amount of the material that is on the finals is information that has been crammed into the schedule, or sometimes not even taught at all.

One really great thing that I have to look forward to about the end of this year is that I will be a senior next year. All of the juniors in my class are really excited to be seniors. With this excitement though, there comes an element of fear. Some of us, myself included, have a part within us saying, "Wait, slow down. I’m not ready to be a senior yet." This fear is to be expected though. There are many big, important decisions that we have to make during our senior year. Luckily we have all summer to "prepare" ourselves to become seniors.

Currently, in my high school, the seniors are no longer in school. Their last week has been completed and they are done. All they are waiting for is graduation. It is a very odd feeling knowing that my class is the oldest class in the school right now. The halls feel very empty and so do some of my classes. Just to think that next year, that will be me.

Finals and last minute learning are not the only things that come with the end of the year: summer, of course, comes also. Everyone loves summer. Every teen looks forward to summer. With summer comes vacation, free time spent with friends, relaxation, camps, parties, and so much more.

Although, with summer comes summer jobs. Most teenagers that are sixteen, seventeen and eighteen years old know that summer jobs will become a priority during the summer. Finding a summer job is not always the easiest task though. Many teenagers begin looking for jobs before the school year ends, sometimes as early as February or March. But, many find that employers are not interested in hiring potential employees who can only work one or two times a week or who can only work during the summer. Jobs are out there though, it is just finding them that can be a challenge sometimes.

Summer may not last long, but every teen looks forward to the three months of time spent, for the most part, in the way that they want to spend it. We love not being in school, not learning, having fun, and relaxing by taking time for ourselves instead of focusing on getting homework done or studying for a test.