By Noah Brown

While being employed is a good sign of adulthood and taking independence, many seniors find struggle between balancing the aspects of a career with attending high school full time. Students advocate for more flexibility in their schedules, and although Guyer has definitely shown a sign of doing so, many students wish for more change. Dylan Freeman, a 12th grader, stated that Guyer should take a step forward in order to help create a better environment for students that are employed.

Dylan – who has been balancing his job at the local Whole Foods with full-time school – expressed that the administration should aim to create better conditions for the students who are currently struggling to one, make ends meet, and two, working to start a career. Dylan, who attends  the Career Prep course, which aims to prepare students for life outside of school, expressed that the class lacks important guidance and preparation for the working path.

Dylan communicated, “Career prep isn’t exactly preparing you for a career, it just helps you understand the basics for a job, like learning how to file forms or send in an application.” With this in mind, it would make sense why students who are forced or decided to work while attending high school struggle with balancing their jobs with school assignments. The issue doesn’t involve only seniors either, but students from all grades. 

The career prep class needs to provide  the proper coordination between administrators, teachers, counselors and students in order to facilitate the employed to succeed in both responsibilities; job and school. Thanks to his working experience, Dylan has supplied ideas to other students; about communicating with job recruiters, their employer, their teachers, and other students around them, who do not understand the job demands. “Guyer should help out students with job applications or help prepare with interviews, maybe even teaching how to properly budget.” Dylan said.

Regardless of whatever solution is advocated to benefit the majority of students at Guyer  which are employed while taking courses, students and teachers should aim to help assist, communicate, and understand the issues that these employed students have. Most teachers state that high school is the preparation for college and careers. If that’s the case, students are feeling under-represented in the eyes of the administration. These future scholars are spending their time outside of school taking shifts at their local jobs in order to save up for college instead of investing their time into other personal interests. This share of students want to have their voice heard, especially considering they balance both the timely manner of education and work.