At Ursuline Academy, students’ schedules are filled with hard core curriculum and grueling study sessions. Their schedules are hectic and intense, which is why summer school is the perfect opportunity to lighten the course load on your schedule.
Ursuline offers many noncredit and credit courses that are available in the summer, such as speech and wellness for the freshman and sophomore class. From my own experience, taking speech and wellness over the summer last year helped me create a space in my schedule for newspaper.
During summer school, I got to stay in touch with my friends and we treated the days like a normal day at school, except less work. Even freshman year I took summer school classes, and it help me become familiar with the campus and introduce myself to new people.
I am not the only who agrees with the claim that summer school is beneficial. For example, Shelby Sawyer ’22 said, “I was able to only take one semester of computer science during the school year which enabled me to take one of my favorite classes, sports medicine.” With the help of summer school Shelby enjoyed her school year of taking an interesting elective course, such as sports medicine.
The idea of going to summer school is not how most teens imagine their summer to be like. However, the result of going makes their school year less stressful because they got credit classes out of the way or they took an interesting class that made them explore other new courses. The day itself feels shorter than an average school day. During school, we have four classes and maybe an activity period after first. At summer school, students can choose if they want to apply for one or two classes, which makes the hours go by quicker. Lunch is the same as during the school year; students can chat amongst their friends and eat until the next class starts. At the end of the day, students feel relaxed and less stressed.
Another contributing factor is that there is a lot of information in a short amount of time. This may be good for some students. Teachers give out a semester’s worth of curriculum in less than a month. Although the classes will be taught at a fairly quick pace, it may be easier than taking that class during the semester.
Lastly, because Ursuline offers credit courses, which are the most popular, this gives students the opportunities to double track in a science or language class, or they could take an online class. Having the ability to go beyond of the required credits not only makes the student look productive and hardworking, it also gives them the chance to find topics that interest them.
For example, Sophomore Giselle Sethi ’22, “It gave me freedom to do more fun classes/electives other people choose to do frees but I use summer school to free up spaces for classes that aren’t just core classes.” Giselle wanted to be apart of the school newspaper and yearbook, but she did not know how she would fit those two classes into her already bust schedule. She took introduction to computer science over the summer to relieve her of stressing out over the school year about how she needs to complete her computer science credit.
Ultimately, taking summer school comes with its ups and downs, just like any other class at Ursuline. However, there are many benefits to taking a summer school credit or noncredit class. Students can adapt to the new environment, if the student is an incoming freshman, explore their new interests, or complete their required credits.
Image courtesy of Natalie Ro ’20
