Advisory is known for many things- connecting students to teachers, preparing students for college and the rest of their life, and providing homework time. This seminar period has been put in place to better our high school career and provide support for students when it is time to advance into the real world.

Even though this is the main goal, advisory sticks out best as a secret study hall, even though the words study hall are not in the school’s vocabulary. With all of the extracurricular activities students are involved in, it would not be a bad idea to have this set aside for study time.

Teachers have always been known to be advocates of clubs, teams, and outside activities, but yet the homework load they give their students does not decrease. For the ones who do take advice from teachers and involve themselves with extra curricular activities, they are swallowed up by all their duties, desperately praying for a free period to catch up. We sacrifice crucial sleep for a life in high school.

Although we do get at least two of the five days of advisory for homework and study time, the curriculum we are given for the remaining three is draining. From bonding time to financial aid, students gaze at the clock, hoping for the period to end. Making goals is easy, but when a teacher is standing over your shoulder making you create goals just to fill up the page, advisory becomes excessive. As students, we have goals. Big goals, small goals, we have them, but we need to learn to meet those on our own because when we finally step into the real world, our motherly teachers are absent. We take over. How are we going to take over if we have been taught to meet our goals, not for ourselves, but for those in charge of us.

Many students are pleading to be treated as grownups. The administration is engraving it into our brains that we do not need to depend on those around us because one day it will all be on us, and then here comes advisory. A personalized time set aside for the birth of new relationships with our teachers. A time set aside for preparing us for exactly what the college life does not offer. A time set aside to hold us accountable for our grades, our goals, our accomplishments. A time set aside to do the exact opposite of why it was created.