The LISD district knows the freshman requirement class, Professional Communications is educating us about colleges and the ones we want to apply to. We believe professional communication should be a requirement class for juniors rather than freshmen because it would benefit the upperclassmen who actually need to know about colleges more than the underclassmen who are just barely getting into high school.

With seniors getting closer and closer to graduation, the level of anxiety has risen for those who have not picked colleges to apply to or learn everything they need to know about college last minute. Generally college applications open in July but not everyone knows how to apply, we are told last minute about everything we should know but we don’t grasp it quickly enough or have enough time to ask questions and fully understand what we’re going to have to do when applications are released, leaving us clueless and panicked.

A class about colleges and our futures is unnecessary for freshman to take; the students are straight out of middle school and still don’t know what career path and classes they want to take. It’s more logical to have juniors take the class because junior year is the most important year of high school: taking the ACT and/or the SAT, applying for colleges and scholarships, getting letters of recommendations and learning what they want to do as a career and where they want to study it.

Of course it would be difficult to switch the year the class is required to be taken, but it would be a real benefit to those who are juniors or becoming juniors. By the time freshmen reach their junior year, they will have forgotten all about what they learned about colleges and not taking the most important year seriously, jeopardizing their chances of getting into the college they wanted to apply to.

We believe switching the Professional Communications class from a freshman requirement class to a junior requirement class would have a very positive and effective outcome. Juniors would take their classes more seriously and learn everything they need to know about colleges while getting closer to applying and heading off to college after graduation, feeling confident knowing everything they needed to know.