When Frederick High’s freshmen, sophomores, and juniors return from Winter Break on Tuesday, January 7, they won’t just need to be thinking about a new semester—they need to start thinking about next year.
Students that are not in their senior year will start signing up for their 2025-2026 classes in Advisory on Wednesday, January 8, a process that the counseling department hopes to have wrapped up by the end of that month. While this process usually is done through the Infinite Campus MyAP feature, system errors with MyAP have resulted in an all-paper-and-pen registration this year.
Class registration has always happened in the semester before the following year, but registration has been getting earlier over the past few years. Registration now starts on the earliest possible date without going into the fall semester. The push to make registration early is more about teachers than students: if the school gets a solid student count before the March and April hiring fairs, they can make sure they are looking at the best candidates from the first round of applicants just graduating from college. As FHS has grown and added to its staff year after year since 2015, Frederick High has kept registration early in second semester in anticipation of several new hires.
Still, choosing classes so early may be contributing to “game plan anxiety,” a pressure on students to have a detailed map of their future plans that is the top contributor to student burnout. It’s hard for students, especially freshmen, to know what classes they want to take when they are still not sure what’s available or what teachers they like best.
Moving to a paper registration system instead of the usual MyAP process may also cause some student anxiety, but the Frederick High administration and counseling department have ensured that this change won’t affect students enrolling in the classes they want and need—after all, the entire freshman class is enrolled through paper registration forms filled out during eighth grade. Since they cannot check on their students registration through MyAP as usual, parents will also be asked to review their student’s registration paper before it is submitted to their Advisory. A link to the registration paper can be found here.
Any student that is feeling anxious about registration can relieve that pressure by starting early. Students can read the course catalog and write down any classes they think would be fun to take and write them on a list. It’s important to check if that class has a prerequisite (a class students need to take and pass before that class) and if the class is open to the grade level. Also, do not select classes just based on the teacher, as who teaches the class this year may not be teaching that same class next year.
Older students, teachers, and counselors are good resources to use to talk about classes that students are unsure of. Checking the list of graduation requirements is also a useful source students can check to make sure they are taking their required classes.
