On Sunday Oct. 26, I received a Remind message from my Social Studies teacher telling me that I had to let her know which courses I was interested in for the upcoming school year by the next day. The message caught me completely off guard: I didn’t even know what Social Studies courses were offered at Naperville Central, and now I was suddenly expected to choose one in less than 24 hours.
Naperville Central High School’s Course Awareness Week begins Monday, Oct. 27, a time when counselors and teachers discuss what courses will be offered the following year, walking students through their options. Teacher recommendations are due two days later on Wednesday, Oct. 29.
From there, tenth graders have a little over two weeks to decide their schedules and input them into Schoolinks (Central’s course planning software) by Nov. 13, only 8 days after receiving teacher recommendations.
2 weeks to choose courses that impact the rest of our lives.
That’s not nearly enough time to make such an important decision. The fact is, sophomore schedule selection deadlines – and all grade deadlines, for that matter – are far too early.
Naperville Central staff constantly stress the importance of course selection to students, telling us that our choices are deeply important and to weigh them carefully. Why then, are we only given two weeks to make such a weighty decision?
Taking a career-specific course or elective leads to a lifelong passion in areas such as medicine, writing, cooking or computer sciences and allows a student to explore possible post-secondary majors. Without enough time to think through their choices, a student could overlook specialty classes, causing them to miss out on opportunities.
Even if a student knows their passions and has decided on their major, there are still so many graduation requirements that they must meet. Between a fine arts credit, CTE credits, consumer economics and possibly a language, students often struggle to balance requirements with only seven classes in a day. It takes extensive planning to fulfill required classes, and students who are in music or languages (the majority) have even more trouble fitting in the necessary courses.
During my own course selection process, I had to choose between taking another year of Orchestra or taking AP Psychology. Orchestra has been an integral part of my life since fourth grade, but AP Psychology deeply interests me and is connected to careers I want to pursue after high school. But I only had one open slot to fill, and as a sophomore, I had two weeks to make the decision. Two weeks to decide between continuing a 6-year-long passion or taking a course that could potentially guide my future.
Without enough time to weigh their options, students often end up not fully thinking through their choices or just selecting courses at random. At Central, this is a very real issue with 1,200 second semester course changes processed by Student Services for the 2025-26 school year, the reasoning for these requests being a change of mind. Such a large number of changes clearly indicates that students simply need more time to choose, or else they’re likely to make decisions that they’ll later want to change.
I’ve certainly seen this reflected in my own experience. When choosing classes for my sophomore year, I met twice with my counselor to alter my courses after they were finalized. So, not only is the course selection process scheduled too early into the school year, but the time period is also insufficient for students to make decisions they’re wholly satisfied with.
The courses that we take in high school significantly impact our futures. Classes are a way for students to explore their interests, test their academic limits, and build a transcript for post-secondary opportunities. They determine our GPA, passions, free time and high school experience as a whole.
Students, especially sophomores, simply need more time to choose. Whether it’s through later deadlines or earlier course awareness weeks, we need more time to think things through. Two weeks isn’t even enough time to decide which color dress you wear to Homecoming. We shouldn’t be expected to select pivotal courses in the same amount of time.
