The Boys & Girls of NHS
Are Back In Town

August 2006

It’s August, and while the majority of the month is considered a part of summer, the school year starts in this month. Let the worrying begin. During the school year, Sundays are one of the worst days of the week. While football lessens the agony, there’s nothing worse than dreading the inevitable start of the week.

In the summer, August is one long Sunday. School’s coming and we all know it, though we try to deny it. The realization that school is just around the corner comes in particular on 3 days. First, chronologically, is Monday August 14. That’s the day that official practice starts for all fall sports teams.

The summer practices typically start early in the morning (cross country starts at 8:00 a.m.), and they certainly are a shock to our lazy bones. The second day of realization comes during the week of August 14th. Students of all classes, senior to freshman, 2007-2010, go to registration that week. They get their schedules, pay for their parking spaces, and of course, get their pictures taken. Some haven’t set foot in the school since the last day of school in mid-June, by design.

Finally, the third and final warning that school is coming takes place on August 26th. That’s the last Saturday before school starts and also the day of the Big Day Prep Showdown football game featuring Novi and Chelsea. It should be a great game, but by acknowledging its existence you acknowledge that those of us who live under the title student-athlete will have to live up to the former title very soon.

So what does it all mean? Obviously high school students don’t live under a rock the whole summer, and know that school is coming. But how does that affect their last few weeks of summer? Well it means different things for the different classes.

Freshman can begin to worry about the uncertainties of high school. But they don’t need to; earlier I offered some tips for freshman in this space. You can read that here.

Sophomores are in an interesting place, they’re not quite worrying about college but already comfortable with where they are in the school. Sophomore year is not a breeze however. It’s the first real year of high school in terms of the curriculum. The plethora of required courses, such as health, are gone. Starting sophomore year the courses become much more about college prep. In fact, some colleges (U of M included) don’t even look at your freshman grades, but your sophomore and junior year grades.

Juniors also have their plates full. Not only do they have to worry about their normal classes but also about standardized tests. That’s right juniors, the words act and sat become the big scary acronyms ACT and SAT. While many juniors take just the ACT, since most in-state colleges only require that test, those considering out of state colleges will be worrying about the SAT as well.

Finally there are the seniors of the class of 2007, most obviously the best class at Novi High School (anybody detect a hint of bias?). They’re worrying about at least 10,000 things. First, many will be taking AP classes that required summer work. Procrastination doesn’t just exist during the school year and many will be scrambling to read books and work on essays that they’ve had all summer to complete.

They also are beginning to fill out their college applications; a long, tedious, and expensive process that causes a lot of stress. Combine AP classes with applications, throw in the great number of seniors with jobs who are also athletes and summer has become something other than lazy days of nothingness. Oh, and did I mention senior pictures?

It’s not all gloom and doom though. Some people actually like school. Yea, I know, pretty shocking. As my dad always says, while school is coming it also means that America’s most popular sport is also coming: football. Who needs “futbol”, European style, when we have football, played the right way?