Freshman Success is semester-long course that all freshmen at Tahoma high school have been required to take since the 2017-18 school year. With its character building focused curriculum, the class seems like it should be an easy ‘A’ for pretty much every student. However, for many, Freshman Success is actually bringing down their GPA.

Why could this be? Not many people would disagree with the statement that Freshman Success assignments aren’t usually particularly difficult. For the most part, they consist of busy work focused around the book The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Teens. So if it’s not the work itself people are struggling with, then what is it?

Perhaps it’s because students don’t think Freshman Success matters as much as their other classes, so they put in less effort. Caitlin Smith, who is about to end the first semester says that her biggest problem is that she doesn’t make her work for Freshman Success a very high priority. “If I have a way too much work to do and I don’t have that much time to do it, Freshman Success doesn’t feel as important as, like, Math. Sometimes I end up just not doing it.”

Multiple students that I asked mentioned that they struggle with the weekly power hour sheets freshman have to complete. Freshman Maddie Sridhar expressed her annoyance regarding the sheets. “I don’t like being forced to go to two power hours a week even when I don’t need any academic support.”  These power hour sheets require students to attend two full thirty minute power hour sessions each week, get teacher signatures as proof that they attended, and get a parent signature. Getting all of those things in four days can sometimes be a challenge, but if a student fails at this signature scavenger hunt regularly, it can cost them their grade. In total, the sheets are worth over fifteen percent of a student’s final grade.

Essentially, though the subject matter covered in Freshman Success is fairly simple, many students are still getting ‘D’s and ‘F’s in it. Ironic as it may be, the high workload consisting mainly of busy work makes it easy for students who struggle with the organization to fail Freshman Success.