CFHS junior prepares to graduate early

Sandra Omari-Botang/Feature Editor

While most CFHS juniors are busily planning their senior schedule, junior Anne Ore is scheduling her freshman year of college. She will be graduating a year early this spring and attending Iowa State in the fall of 2012.

“I decided to graduate early because I felt tired of and unchallenged by most high school courses,” Ore said.

Ore has been planning this move since the second semester of her sophomore year.

“I talked to my teachers to try to find a way to work ahead and hasten my course learning to an appropriate pace, but they failed to accommodate, so I looked for solutions elsewhere,” Ore said.

Ore said she didn’t have to do much to prepare for early graduation. She currently has a full schedule and spent the summer teaching herself precalculus so that she would have enough credits to graduate by the end of her junior year.

“I just had to make sure to get all my specific credits in classes like English to get my eight credits. I’m taking two English classes both semesters to pull this off,” Ore said.
However, she recommends that others interested in graduating as juniors plan farther ahead.

“I only decided last year, and I happened to be in a situation where I could pack all the high school classes I still wanted to take into two semesters, so that was OK, a bit stressful this year,” Ore said.

“It’s a pretty heavy schedule, and I’m not used to doing this much work. If I wanted to attend a more selective college, I wouldn’t have done this. This schedule is lowering my GPA.”
Ore suggests that interested students start planning in in 8th or 9th grade by reading up on all the credits they need before graduation and arranging them throughout their three years accordingly.

Students wanting to graduate early must fill out a form by Oct. 1 of their senior year, but the planning should begin before that to make sure they will meet the requirements and the credits to do so.

Counselor Josh Carnelley said that counselors don’t really don’t decide if a student is eligible to graduate early. “Either they will meet the graduation requirements by January of their senior year or they won’t. Second, if a student is ready to graduate early or not is a whole other ball game.” Carnelley said that the main item to address is what the student’s plans are if they graduate early. “We just want to make sure they have a plan and that it is set up prior to graduation,” Carnelley said.

Ore said that she is ready for college. “I won’t have any free semesters. I’m graduating with the class of 2012 in spring and starting college in fall. After high school, I’ll be most likely attending Iowa State University for engineering. I’m 16 now, so if I go through college in four years, I’ll get my degree when I’m 20. Then I’ll probably either continue my education or start working,” Ore said.

All students are different. Some are ready to graduate early and others need to have the full experience of high school to be prepared for their futures. “The hardest thing is knowing I’m not going to be with the same people throughout all of my high school career and not being as close, which makes it harder to be closer with them. It’s easiest knowing I never have to come back to deal with drama from high schoolers, and I feel very accomplished,” Ore said.