There’s no questioning the fact that the “six weeks system” is a bit messed up at this point. Often times, a six weeks will only last about four weeks, whereas other times it will extend up to an entire eight weeks. The fall semester usually has the shorter six-week terms, and in the spring semester, the six-weeks tend to be much longer. Is there any reasonable way to solve this issue?

Honestly, I think this issue is beyond our control. Sure, I don’t like having this imbalanced six-week system as much as the next student. Often times, it can cause stress and mess up the teacher’s curriculum, however there’s only so much that can be done about the limited time in between summer vacation and winter vacation. The only way to make it work would be to move holidays around, which is rather unreasonable.

Having these strangely ordered six-week periods can cause for some confusion and stress for both students and teachers. I don’t like this system in the fall semester because it will oftentimes give me a sense of false security. I’ll think I have all this time to work on that big project, and suddenly I’m met with the deadline two weeks earlier than I’m expecting. Having two weeks shaved off every grading period in the fall semester makes a huge impact on projects and assignments due. This also affects the pace at which teachers teach contents, which can be stressful on both the students learning and the teachers teaching.

Unfortunately, there is no real, practical way to solve this issue. The space between summer vacation and winter break is, quite literally, not long enough to support three six-week periods. With the combination of Thanksgiving break and winter vacation, there is no way to fit enough days in between the start and end of the first semester to make full six-week periods. Bowie is doing the best it can by giving us these impaired six-week periods.

The only feasible way to extend the amount of time between the starts and ends of semesters would be to rearrange the way our holidays are laid out. Summer vacation could be moved earlier in the year, maybe towards May, however I don’t think the head of AISD is going to approve a change to a calendar schedule every school in Austin uses, or even in Texas for that matter, just so one high school can have a balanced six-week system. Therefore, the chances that summer vacation could be moved to accommodate for our system is next to none.

One option to try and solve this problem could be to extend the end of the first semester so it ran through winter break but, in my opinion, this is also a really bad idea. A student would most likely forget a lot of information they learned over the course of winter break. Additionally, having a change like this added would mess up the whole structure of the school schedule. Honestly, there’s no reasonable way to have equal six-week sessions in both the fall and spring semesters.

As much as I wish we could find a way to make a perfect six-week system exist, I don’t think there’s any feasible way to make it work without creating massive, unlikable changes to the school’s schedule. We’ll just have to live with the imbalanced system we have in place now.