With every new year comes another class of freshman stumbling through campus halls for the 1st time. In an attempt to alleviate some of the rookie mistakes new students are prone to make, they are forced to attend the mandatory, but utterly useless, “freshmen seminars”.

The freshmen seminars are a series of 5 dull Academy sessions intended to teach freshmen how to grow and prosper at Campolindo. Students are inefficiently introduced to the ill-effects of peer pressure, the dangers of the internet, and other topics that have already been drilled into their heads in grade and middle school.

This is not time well spent.

Freshmen, including myself, don’t like the seminars.  There are too many of them, and they don’t teach valuable information.

“I’m glad they reduced it from 10 weeks to 5 weeks” this year, said freshman Liliana Jensen. “I don’t think we need that much since we are already told most of the stuff.”

Freshman Patrick Volk agreed that “it was too long, and people lost interest after the 2nd or 3rd week.”

Cut down from 10 to 5 weeks, and people are still complaining.

Students have already learned much of the material earlier in their academic careers. No wonder students feel their time is being wasted.

The freshman seminar is a dreadful way to welcome students to high school.

“It was kind of just rambling on and on about what they wanted and what they expected from us students and it just made us lose interest,” said Volk.

These sessions are a waste of funding that should be going to more meaningful and effective instruction.

It is not that freshmen don’t care about the issues of cyberbullying or the dangers of  peer pressure. The problem is that they have been schooled about these things for many years already.  The seminar is a exercise in redundancy.

Freshmen would be better served by allowing them to use the Academy sessions just like the rest of the student population; they need to make up assignments, receive critical intervention, and have extra time to complete work, just like sophomores, juniors and seniors.

If the district insists on taking Academy time away from freshmen, then they need to develop curriculum that is actually engaging and relevant to the unique needs of freshmen, not just a regurgitation of the same content they’ve suffered through for years already.

Thankfully, the district has taken the 1st step in rectifying this problem by conducting a survey of the freshmen regarding the effectiveness of the seminar.  I certainly hope those in charge actually view the results, which will no doubt echo the sentiments I’ve provided here.

“I feel like it just wasn’t the best,” said Volk. “I think they could have definitely done a better job of improving that experience by incorporating more interesting tactics for freshman seminar.”

As we prepare 8th graders for their ascent into high school, it is important that we reassess the process through which they adjust.