Two Sides of a Coin

Whether they are just stepping into high school or getting ready to walk across the graduation stage, Jefferson Academy students find guidance in the school’s two seminar classes: Freshman Seminar and Senior Seminar.

Freshman and Senior Seminars are classes at JA that prepare students in the corresponding grades. Freshman Seminar focuses on getting used to high school life, while Senior Seminar focuses on preparing seniors for college. 

“I have a better view on college life and how prepared I need to be for the upcoming years,” senior Cassie Davis explained. “Some felt [like it was] just busy work, but for my class, it felt like we were super on top and ahead of the other classes involving things like our Senior Seminar paper and presentation.”

Some seniors, however, expected the class to be more focused on the challenges of adulthood and how to live in the world after high school instead of just college.

“I wish Senior Seminar focused more on how to live on our own and what being an adult is like,” senior Karma Berry said. “We did start the class by doing assignments regarding this, but we stopped because it became too much work with the final presentation and paper.”

For the final project in the Senior Seminar class, after spending 40 hours doing a job shadow in that field that they are interested in, students are required to write a paper about a problem in the field and create a presentation. Some students believe that there are misconceptions about the project. 

“As a school we need to drop the legend of the paper and presentation being insanely hard, because it is not,” senior Lucia Mott stated. “Senior Seminar should focus more on preparing us for college and less on these finals that really don’t mean much at the end of the day.”

Unlike the Senior Seminar class, the Freshman Seminar class is focused more on high school instead of college. A lot of freshmen have felt that it has helped the transition from middle to high school. 

“Freshman Seminar has kind of helped me adjust to high school life. It tells us how we can study and just be prepared for tests and also use our time wisely for homework,” shared freshman Arnel Mehidic. “I think we are assigned a perfect amount of work every day. It also isn’t too hard and isn’t too easy.”

In every class, there will always be cases where students think that certain aspects of the class may not have been the best use of their time. Sometimes, this can make it difficult to learn and retain information.

“I feel like it helped me adjust to high school in some parts but not others,” freshman Ashley Bilby mentioned. “I feel like the little bit of vocabulary we did wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t as aligned as a normal class, so I felt very disengaged and not focused on the class.”

Although there can be many ups and downs to the seminar classes, they both introduce students to the next part of their lives.

Davis exclaimed: “I have a better view on college life and how prepared I need to be for the upcoming years!”