At San Luis Obispo High School, students have a variety of interests that they hope to turn into a career. The interests vary from robotics to design to childcare to makeup. Classes are offered that prepare students for their future. However, the classes that are offered are classified as electives, meaning most of the time students have no space in their schedule for those classes due to all of the required courses.
If students take classes that interest them, they will be more knowledgeable about what they want to do in the future. Some students already know what they want to do for a career, and a lot of the general education classes do not help prepare students for their future career.
“I’m taking United States history over the summer right now so I can fit two trimesters of newspaper and a full year of band into my schedule. I want to have a career in journalism, but it’s very stressful because I have to take summer school so I can take newspaper. This class prepares me for my future career in journalism, while continuing my love for music with band,” said junior Isabella Hoffmann.
While sitting in a class for seventy minutes, most students would agree that they find themselves bored for the majority of the period. This defeats the purpose of taking the class because if the student is not interested in the subject or does not find the class important the students will not try their best in the class. Many skills taught in classes are valuable, however, there is quite a bit of unnecessary information forced upon students that they will quickly forget.
“I think it is really hard to pursue things that I find interesting, because I have to meet the requirements to eventually graduate. We should be able to choose our own classes at a pace that best fits our interests.” said sophomore Sonia McSwain.
Overall, as a school, the students find themselves uninspired to find their passion in life. By the time senior year comes most students begin to stress about how unprepared they are for the real world. This is due to the fact they never had enough space in their course requests to take the classes that would prepare them. The main focus of choosing classes needs to be put on student interests.
