It’s definitely great to be back at school again after staying and homeschooling in Taiwan for two years. My math definitely improved the most during this time, though did not have a lot of real social connections, even though I had many friends on Instagram.
The first week of school (9/8/-9/10) was definitely the most hectic time out of these few weeks. I came into my high school with no coursework at all; I enrolled very late into the district and had to meet with the counselor on the first day to discuss what courses I will take for ninth grade. I was supposed to be in tenth grade but they moved me back to ninth because I had no records for my schooling last year and the year before.
I entered the school with no knowledge of where I was supposed to go. There were many teachers and junior/senior students that were helping out, so I asked one of them where the counselor offices were and eventually made my way there.
There were a lot of students that didn’t know where to go this year because the sophomores had their freshman year virtually last year while the incoming freshmen were in eighth grade. It was a big quandary everywhere.
I met with my counselor and chose my courses. I had wanted to take Honors & Accelerated Geometry but the counselor just told me that I was not on the H/A course track. Even if I was in H/A, it would probably be easy; I had already finished geometry a long time ago and am trying to transition to math olympiads from AIME. Nevertheless, I chose Advanced Algebra 2 Honors and decided to play along with the absurd district system.
Along with that, I chose Language I Honors which was the highest level for LA I could take. But I inadvertently chose all regular for my other core courses along with Spanish 2.
One or two days later, I walked into my counselor’s office to change my Biology and World History classes to honors. The change was made for biology but she did not find a spot for World History Honors.
Originally, I didn’t want to switch to honors for my other courses. I had a good teacher for World History anyways. However, my mom convinced me that honors would be much better for my transcript. Indeed, almost all courses are worth five high school credits but the difficulty level differs for each category; for example, American Studies I and AP US History are obviously considered different. I agreed with her and decided to change both World History and Spanish 2 to World History Honors and Spanish 3, respectively. I did not do honors for Spanish 3 because it is primarily for students aiming to take AP Spanish Language in their junior or senior years, which I did not want to do.
I had to wait until September 20th until I could request course changes. When it came, I filled out two separate forms for my two courses. It was approved a few days later and my schedule changed yet again; my Study Hall period was also different.