School started today. This is my senior year, and since I had all the credits I needed to graduate last year, I decided to take both Late Arrival and Early dismissal. This year they changed a lot of rules, most of them minor, but there is one big one. We aren't allowed to loiter around before or after our times, and we aren't allowed to hang out in a teacher's classrooms. While this may seem like something that should of been done at first, it actually makes things much more difficult. A lot of teachers let seniors with later arrival/early dismissal hang around in their classrooms to work on extracurricular activities. For example, I work on the school newspaper, and I had already worked out a schedule with the teacher in charge of it where I would come in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to work during seventh period during her English III class. Since I also had her for English III my sophomore year, I would help her if she needed any help with things like grading quizzes and such. In NJROTC, the seniors often stay during other class periods to help around with teaching other platoons things like close-order drill. Or hand out in the wardroom, which is there for this EXACT PURPOSE. Since I have extracurricular activities after school, I have to leave school, then find something to do for an hour before being allowed back on campus.
On the purely academic side things are also made more difficult. Because the rule about hanging out in teachers room's apply to everyone, we can no longer go to a teacher's room during the teacher's planning period or study hall in order to make up a test, or to get extra tutoring. We also aren't allowed to hang around to hear the announcements. Since I'm not allowed to hang around at school afterwards, I won't know of any kind of emergency meeting, and to learn when everything starts I have to purely rely on people contacting me outside of school. All this is enough to make a lot of people actually go ahead and request that their early dismissal period be turned into a study hall, but I can't do that because I have already registered to take dual enrollment classes at a nearby college two days a week.