One of the biggest responsibilities that high school presents to each student during their four-year experience is to put together a schedule that works best for them.

Although in the long run it seems as though it’s not earth-shattering if someone decides to take one class over another, these decisions may be more important than they appear.

However, if they do have a significant impact on the student’s future, it is most likely not directly related to the class itself, but rather to the manner in which the student decides to take or not to take the classes in question.

Did Jimmy decide to take the AP science course because he’s sincerely interested in the topics covered?  Or, instead, did he enroll because he’s naturally good at the subject?  Did his parents put pressure on him to sign up for the course?  Or maybe, indirectly, he felt obligated to take it as a result of the actions and mindsets of his peers.

Most accurately, all of the above factors and perhaps even more play into the decision-making process. It’s not very significant which ones have a stronger presence than others. What matters is how the student chooses to respond to the different aspects that play into the process, especially when they start building up one on top of the other.

The worst possible case scenario would involve a student choosing to eliminate a certain class or classes from his or her schedule and, as a direct result, not being granted admission to the college of their choice or not receiving his or her desired job position right out of high school.

However, except for an occurrence like this one, the long-term impacts of the decisions that go into schedule-making are few if any.  Although, especially during the long winter months in St. Louis, a school year can seem like forever, it always seems to end in a flash and then next year’s schedule is right around the corner.

That said, post-secondary schooling is different. Then, engineers place more emphasis on their education in mathematics and science, students of philosophy place a greater amount of emphasis on the classics and language-learners immerse themselves in another culture so that they can fill a specific role when all is said in done.

Yes, the overall rigor of a student’s schedule can help to build his or her work ethic and character, but the actual classes that students take in high school aren’t that important. All of them help to train the brain, and aside from a few AP classes for which one can receive college credit, none of the information in them is needed (although, in most cases, it will definitely help) for success after high school.

So, aside from the fact that they have the potential to contribute directly to our success after graduation, the classes that we choose don’t matter so much.

What does matter is what students choose to let influence their decisions regarding their high school schedules and, more specifically, how they choose to weigh the factors side-by-side.

Old habits die hard.

Worry a tiny bit about how much your schedule challenges you.  Worry a little bit less about how the actual content that you’re currently absorbing is going to impact your life right out of high school. However, worry a lot about how you treat each of the factors that play into your schedule-making decisions. There’s nothing more difficult to change than a habitual response to certain characteristic outside pressures.