Anchorage Daily News

Every spring a raging epidemic seems to hit high schoolers across the country. The diagnosis? Senioritis. According to urbandictionary.com, the symptoms include laziness, excessive wearing of sweatpants and athletic shorts, lack of studying, repeated absences and a generally dismissive attitude.

In other words, students who have senioritis are tired of school and wish they could be anywhere else.

While senioritis generally occurs in the spring of senior year, it affects some students long before. When a student starts dreading school as a junior, the question quickly becomes "What can I do to survive the next year?"

One local answer is Alaska Pacific University's Early Honors Program. Early Honors isn't just for those with senioritis, it's also a place for students coming back from a year abroad, students who want to expand their knowledge past high school and those interested in getting a head-start on college.

The program offers a senior year at Alaska Pacific University. During the year, the Early Honors students take university-level classes that count toward high school graduation requirements as well as freshman college credits. The level at which the Early Honors students wish to engage in the university is up to them. There's a lot of flexibility. If a student wants to take university classes but isn't quite ready to detach themselves from their high school and friends, they can create a schedule that enables them to take APU classes but also enroll at their school and play sports, attend dances and go to pep assemblies.

Early Honors is a pretty drastic change from Anchorage School District high schools. Instead of full school days five days a week, APU allows students to take up to 18 credit hours per semester -- roughly five classes -- at times that work for the students. APU has a block session, in which students intensively pursue one class for four weeks, and then take four to five other classes during the regular semester. Each class is usually held no more than three times a week, and it is common to only have two classes per day.

The student population at APU is also quite different from local high schools, where populations can range from 1,800 to 2,100 students. At APU, there are approximately 700 students. Classes are all small, and the student to faculty ratio is 13:1. Having small classes makes professors incredibly accessible.

Taking university-level classes is a welcome change. APU encourages active learning in the classroom, focusing more on discussion and hands-on learning.

This past year, some Early Honors students, including me, took a class on classical Greece. After reading classical Greek comedies and tragedies, as well as dialogues by Plato, we all traveled to Greece to see the places that we had read about. The program offers a travel block to a different country every year. In past years, students have traveled to England in pursuit of knowledge about King Arthur, and to Italy to study the Anglophone writers, such as Mark Twain, who had lived there. Next year the program will travel to South America.

The Early Honors Program is a unique approach to senior year that not only provides an early taste of college, but also gives a lift to students applying to different colleges for the next four years. The program is an exciting and welcoming challenge for senior year and has plenty to offer to any student.

Sara Perman is a student in the Early Honors Program at APU.

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