Prom night takes its toll: on the wallet, on the brain and on the academics. The Monday after is filled with students falling asleep in class. Discussions of just how delicious breakfast is at five o’clock in the morning if you haven’t gone to bed all night.

The ultimate question for many, what now?

Seniors get out on the 24th of May. They graduate on the 26th. This to me, is super late in the game. With the big dance being over and no more school breaks, students begin to speculate on how late we get out compared to other districts seniors.

The senioritis hits and it seems like the longest stretch of senior year. I look around and there are other school’s seniors who have two weeks left when I have a month.

Jealousy can be an ugly beast when one sees fellow seniors out on the 19th, or actually graduating on the 20th. It just steams my kettle, but I know I’m not the only one. Lack of concern about school and its repercussions is a dangerous thing.

“It feels useless,” senior Cora Bonwell said. “I don’t have any important classes, and yet I have to stay longer than my friends at other schools. Senioritis is rough. It affects me a lot right now.”

It’s important that seniors have a rounded education, that’s understood. However, when the majority of seniors only have a few non-essential classes as their finishing blocks, allowing us to graduate earlier makes sense in it’s own right.

For having essential classes later, allowing schedules to be inspected at the beginning, could be helpful as to not place them so late. Also, planning for teachers would run more smoothly if they had less seniors in their last semester’s classes.

While I understand that the timing can be difficult for teachers to teach classes that involve both seniors and underclassmen, it seems nutty to keep seniors for so long, so close to the actual graduation.

“I have things to do, people to meet, money to make, so making me stay so late is annoying,” senior Osiris Bracamontes-Anguiano said. “I also miss so much school to attend important things that are happening with seniors who are already out.”

By having the seniors graduate earlier, it would help those who are going away for college have time with their families. Perhaps even those who are moving into college early get a head start on packing. It also allows students to work more and make extra money for the summer, and for college books.

As much as I would like to say it was a specific person in charge to talk to about changing it, and that we could picket and storm for better dates and more understanding, the dates for the calendar are set by a district calendar committee and approved by the Board of Education.

It’s difficult to know if they even asked a student’s opinion on the dates, and what would make sense from a student’s perspective. Have someone known for being responsible and even more so reasonable take charge and help the board to see it our way. Seeing as it’s too late in the year to rectify the dates, this is a fore thought for next year.