Do you know what classes you want to take next school year? Did you become flustered or disgruntled upon choosing your classes? This is quite understandable due to the adversity of signing up on X2. While it may seem to be a simple and easy way to choose next year’s courses at first, it is actually a very irritating process.
After logging on, clicking “My Info,” and then selecting the “Requests” tab, a grid with the subject area, subject number, course description, and the number of credits for the course is brought up. The first problem with the grid is the trivial subject number. As long as there is a course description, it is unnecessary to have the number. Another problem causing aggravation is when finding certain classes one wishes to take, he or she may find there is a prerequisite to take before it. The difficulty with this is that the numbers are given instead of course names, which means the person has to sort through most of the classes and look at their assigned number before finding what they want. This just presents a hassle that is completely unneeded.
The recommendations could come off better as well. The recommendations are there for what teachers feel a student should take next year; however, the X2 system thinks differently. It acts as though the recommendations are set in stone; they are not changable just from a normal computer. If someone wants to take Honors English for instance, they may not be able to take it because they were recommended for a Level-One College Preparation class. Another difficult situation for a student is if he or she wanted to drop a language or something of the sort, but their teacher had signed them up to do the next level in the subject. This becomes quite irritating because the schedule becomes filled and other classes won’t be able to be selected.
Another problem with the course selection is that the selection of classes is rather deceptive. One course that could have been chosen for juniors and seniors was Marine Biology, but it was misleading since only students who have taken Integrated Science and Biology were eligible for it, yet it did not give Integrated Science as a prerequisite. If someone wanted to take Film I and II, which would seem possible due to both classes being only a semester long, they were not able to take Film II until they completed Film I. This would not be as troubling if not for Accounting I and II, which are both capable to be chosen without taking Accounting I first. This could make some students tentative to take a Film class because they would rather not take a half year of Film and then make the production in the second half of the year on top of taking another class.
Of course, after selecting all your classes you go to meet with your guidance counselor and consult about the choices you made. But you also go to sort out any of the above mentioned dilemmas or others preventing you from taking the intended path you plan for your high school career. All that is truly necessary from the guidance counselors for the most part is to see if you are taking the proper route for graduation and to whichever college after High School. If the X2 system worked better, all that would happen is the counselors would see what one’s planned classes are and see if they fit graduation requirements. That way, only a few students would be pulled from class, allowing for more class time instead of wasting it in an office. What it comes down to is that if the X2 Course Requests were working at top performance, there would be less stress, more efficiency, and more time for learning.
