Charles Larsen

Imiss elementary school. Times were so much simpler back when snack time and three recess periods were a daily occurrence. As time goes on and students get older, instead of winter break being as much of a holiday as Christmas itself, the feeling of bliss becomes dread as a certain f-word rises slowly into view before the sweet release of break graces us. Finals.

For typical high school students, finals isn’t more of a roadblock than what is presented to them upfront; a few big assignments for each class either consisting of a few multi-page essays or a presentation on a topic of choice. However, finals for me becomes much more of a hassle than usual since I don’t go to the high school. I attend the Shoshone Learning Center.

Aside from being the building somewhat next door to Taco John’s, the SLC is a great place to finish up school if going to the high school is physically or emotionally draining. You have the choice to take your classes online and work at your own pace to graduate on time or early if you put in the work, but for me everything seems to fall apart as each semester ends. More recently, I’ve spent a large chunk of my time the past three weeks grinding out a technical writing class that would culminate in a 10-page essay that I was not looking forward to working on given that I would have a single week to complete it before the semester ends. Fortunately, due to a prior miscommunication, the classwork as well as the essay wouldn’t be due until May, which meant I worked ahead to the very end of the school year when I should have been working on all of my other coursework, which was actually due in a week.

Aside from my panic-fueled work ethic persuading me to do completely unnecessary classwork, another obstacle on the horizon for me is math. Despite the fact that only half of everything you learn in high school algebra is useful in the real world after you get your diploma, neglecting math is a cardinal sin in the world of alternative high school. Since I am not doing the algebra final for this semester (thankfully), I have a solid week of algebra left to do before the unit test. The magical thing about math at this point in our lives is that for people who have a severely short attention span like yours truly, a single math assignment becomes a mountain of work. The only silver lining is that the SLC has some incredibly gifted math tutors, and without them understanding the material would be close to impossible.

On that note, my inability to understand math was one of the driving forces persuading me to join the SLC, since despite my teacher’s best efforts to keep me engaged back at the high school, I would nosedive into bad grades in each class before just barely making it out of the school year with a D, which wouldn’t look so good on my transcript. Alternatively, my understanding of other coursework also helped me make the change from traditional high school easier since I felt very dissatisfied with the fact that I had to sit through a slow English class that would end up causing me to nod off and forget about assignments before I could catch them. Since I can work at my own pace with English I can knock out each assignment as it comes by and not get caught by surprise by smaller assignments dragging my grades down.

For my senior year, I am performing much better than previous years. This year, I am expected to finish math with a solid B and have my progress be way ahead of my other classes. Aside from all the heartache this point of the year provides me, I’m glad it’s almost over.