You get your schedule at registration, and you see that you have five core classes due to your taking an Advanced Placement (AP) course. Now you have to choose which electives are more important to you. 

Honors and AP) classes are taking away from arts and other electives we want to pursue. 

Most AP classes are two semesters long, taking valuable time away from students. Some students drop these classes and are put in a lower class, which they find too easy, — all to still be able to play their instrument. 

Another issue is that some elective classes are two semesters long. For example, in orchestra, if you miss the fall semester, you will be behind the class if you go back the next semester. If you skip the spring semester, then you won’t be able to audition for the honors if you’re in Concert. 

Another issue is that you can have a semester full of core classes. For example, you can have only theater and the rest are math, science and history. The majority of students will pick their favorite class then they won’t be able to try anything new. 

Classes at Swofford are difficult to take because they take two blocks in the day. If your AP calculus class is only in the afternoon, and your AP physics class is only in the morning then you can’t take a Swofford class. 

What we could do to fix this issue is have a different class each day. Most schools in Europe have something similar to this where they have, say, chemistry on Mondays and Thursdays and math on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This would allow honors students to take all the courses available to them without limiting their creative ability. And non-honors students can try new things and discover their passions. 

But for now we just have to rearrange our schedules to fit all the electives we want to take.