This year, in lieu of making AP students fill out their pre-registration forms during class time, the TJ administration has sought to develop a more efficient method instead: Asking every student in the entire junior grade to spend their lunch last Monday, April 22nd to fill out paperwork for all their AP class registrations. Better said than done.
Indeed, it makes plenty of sense to knock it all out in one day, rather than asking each individual class to sacrifice an entire day’s worth of instruction dedicated to filling out paperwork. But stuffing the lecture hall to the brim with students, and forcing trickling slackers to the confined classrooms in the hall across, felt the exact opposite of inefficient. At first, it wasn’t all too bad. I walked in and searched for my name among the sea of packets of AP-registration papers, and found mine neatly paperclipped together. I grabbed it and sat down in a table. Firstly, the instructions given were convoluted and incomplete. They pretty much deemed useless as soon as the teachers began screaming directions into the mic. Everyone was busying themselves with filling out housekeeping information, such as name and address; no one was listening. Maybe I’m just a visual learner, but shouting a string of unrelated instructions one after another doesn’t help me finish this faster. At one point the teacher asked everyone to look up as she pointed to a ridiculously tiny portion of the AP registration packet. How do you expect us to see that? The lecture hall felt stuffy from the hot breath of dozens of teenagers all crammed shoulder-to-shoulder at the uncomfortably close tables. No one knew what was going on, and no one was finished by the time lunch was over. We were well into JLC by the time students submitted their paperwork and began heading out. We were met with a long line of chattering students, who were patiently waiting to take their turn to fill out the registration paperwork. We turned in each AP test paperwork to their respective bin. Speaking of reduced efficiency, placing the bins on the ground or a chair, and putting their labels at the front of the bin was absolutely ridiculous. This meant asking everyone to bend down and crane their necks to find the appropriate bin. Seemingly insignificant, but every crane of the neck meant another five seconds of everyone’s waiting to get out! It promptly fueled my frustration with the whole ordeal.
Next year I will be wholeheartedly disappointed to see the administration execute this same disaster. Either return to last year’s method or devise something new.