Junior Year is often considered the most difficult year of high school. The year right before you pick what college you’ll be attending, and the year that classes are more difficult, the year that most students take the ACT. At Dowling, we get Prime Time at the end of most days. Until this year, juniors would default to Prime Time in their homerooms, a classroom environment, where they could work at a desk to complete their homework assigned that day. Now, juniors are defaulted to the auditorium where some find it difficult to work. Others prefer this to the old way because they can hang out with their friends or have a nice change in scenery from being in classrooms all day. Either way, this change has impacted the junior class this year.
Meredith Shuput is a junior who dislikes being in the auditorium for Prime Time. She tells me how focusing in this environment can be difficult. She recounts that “the auditorium is different from a classroom environment which can be very distracting for me.” Shuput also mentioned how the WiFi is often spotty there. This causes many students to be unable to work on their Chromebooks during Prime Time. She also brings up the issue of there being no desks to work on in the auditorium. Shuput adds, “Without having a desk to work on it can be very frustrating to work on my math homework.” Overall, Shuput prefers to spend her Prime Time in a classroom.
Emma Frese is a junior who enjoys being in the auditorium for Prime Time. In the auditorium, she gets to spend the last part of her day with friends. Frese tells me, “I like the auditorium because I can take a breather from school with my friends at the end of the day.” She also talks about how she is still able to get homework done in the auditorium. She says, “The students who are in the auditorium always make sure to stay relatively quiet so that way the people who want to do their homework still can.” The auditorium is still able to provide the juniors with an environment to do homework even though it is not a traditional classroom. In the end, Frese enjoys being in the auditorium for Prime Time.
There are both positives and negatives to the juniors being in Prime Time. With this change, the junior and sophomore homeroom teachers can keep their Prime Time class sizes smaller. This greatly benefits the teachers and the students going to those teachers for help. On the other hand, the auditorium can make it very difficult for students to be productive during Prime Time. Either way, this change has greatly affected the already stressful junior year for the junior class.
