Student Blog: A Look Into a Second Semester of a Grade 11 Student

To kick off my time with the spring season of the Student Bloggers Program, I was asked to write about my current school semester, and I’m very happy to let you know about it! This month I began the second semester of my junior year.

So far in my high school career most of my classes have all been more academic, like math and english, but this year my semester includes a painting and drawing course, along with creative writing, musical theatre and vocals. As you can see, my course load is very arts based, and I honestly love it so much. This is my first year at a new school as well, and it’s safe to say that this high school is way better than the last.

My last high school was an arts high school, but their programs were very heavy with student biases, and overall the arts courses really weren’t all that beneficial. However, at my current high school they take the arts more seriously and they welcome basically any student and give them opportunities that will actually benefit them. My school has multiple choirs, and I’m currently in the junior jazz choir. The experience has been great! They also offer opportunities for basically any crew position in the theatre world, whether it be costuming or tech or even set painting and construction, they have students running it all for their yearly productions. However, this also means that during musical season at my high school, things will be chaotic absolutely everywhere. For example, I am currently writing this essay in the corner of a Tim Hortons at noon on a Tuesday because my school had a matinee today, and classes were practically shut down for the day due to the lack of students that weren’t partaking in the musical this year.

The first few weeks have been pretty great I would say! I was originally in a gender studies course for my first period, but I ended up switching to an art course, which ended up being way better. My art class is very relaxed and welcoming, which makes me excited to get up in the morning. For my second period I have creative writing, which is also a very relaxed class. I’m a great writer, so that class is great for me to practice.

Musical theatre and vocals are my last two periods, and they’re run by the same teacher in two different rooms right next to each other, so it honestly just feels like one long class period, especially considering the fact that all of the musical theater students are in the vocal class. Those two will most likely be my best classes of this semester, and I’m glad I have them. All of these courses as a whole result in a very light course load, which is honestly great for me since I’m currently working with a part time job, and I’m in both a play and a musical as of right now, with singing lessons on top of that. Having these courses results in not a lot of homework, leaving me plenty of free time to pursue my acting career while having a job.

My semester will be ending at some point in June, and the productions I’m in will be happening in both May and June, so even though this semester feels easy right now, I already know it will become very chaotic around that time period and I will need to juggle things a little bit. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any exams for my classes, so I’m grateful for that and I think that’s a huge amount of pressure taken off for the most part, but final assignments could be tricky. I know for musical theatre we have to write a jukebox musical for our final assignment, so maybe I can fill you in on that one in the future, but otherwise I’m not too sure what my assignments will be. We shall see what my future will hold!