This year, sophomores will experience a twist in their curriculum. The research paper, which has always been assigned during junior year, will now be written in the spring of sophomore year.
Weeks of preparation for midterms, followed a month later by the strenuous tests of CAPT is tedious enough.
Adding together this work and the stress that accompanies a research paper sounds almost too cruel to many. According to English teachers, the research paper was switched to the sophomore year to prevent more stress next year, when new, state-mandated standardized testing will face the junior class.
Ben Popkin ’16 said having CAPT right after midterms, soon followed by a research paper, is not fair.
“It’s an awful idea. We already have a lot of stress from midterms. This is not right. I am extremely nervous about how I will be able to manage everything all at once,” Popkin said.
Similar to Popkin, Gracyn Levenson ’16 is not a fan.
“It is like they are trying to take the stress of junior year and put it onto us as sophomores,” Levenson said.
Some classes are already facing a changed curriculum. Halle Foster’16 has already begun to work on her research paper in English class.
“It screws up the entire class because we are dead in the middle of our poetry unit,” she said.
A handful of students realize that CAPT testing is mandatory and something they can’t control, but moving the research paper, they say, is something that can be changed.
Caroline Didelot ’16 said, “I wish this research paper would be moved; I don’t want to write it this year when it we should be doing it as juniors.”
Some said they don’t really feel the stress of CAPT, just the research paper that follows directly after. Charlotte Caccamise ’16 is one. “I’m just stressed about the research paper that we have directly after CAPT,” Caccamise said.
