Why Northsiders should stress less about their futures
by Sarah Schoonhoven

As I write this, I am concurrently trying to de-cramp my hands, as I have been on the computer for the last seven hours straight. Why, you ask? The answer, a simple, three-word response, makes around 300 Northside juniors cringe every spring: Student Self-Assessments. This online survey contains almost 40 questions that each Northside junior must answer as completely as possible in order for the Counseling Department to complete “Counselor Recommendations” for college applications. This completed assessment was due sometime in February.

The idea is a good one, in theory. If the counselor has one document with a student’s achievements, goals, intended major, and some interesting experiences, the counselor should be able to write a decent recommendation. The problem, however, does not lie in the idea, but in the execution.

The assessment is introduced every year at the College Planning Night in early February, and this year’s responses were requested by February 12, barely a week after the Night. I’m not going to lie, I finished mine much after that, but who has seven hours to spend filling out a survey during the school year? If the Counseling Office wanted the form that quickly, then they should have given out the assessment in September.

There is also the idea of content. Many of the questions were quite similar, and others were just too vague. Most students do not want to spend the time it takes to answer, “Describe a book, play, film, article, world event, or personal experience that influenced either your thoughts, beliefs, or actions.” Granted, it is usually easier to answer an open-ended question, but this one is so far open that it actually looks closed again. This, in combination with the fact that there were just too many questions in general, made this survey a hassle to fill out.

This assessment is also highly impractical. The chance that a counselor will read every response to every question from each of his/her students is incredibly small; it would make more sense to pare down the number of questions asked and to get full, complete responses to each question. The assessment also assumes something very important: that every college the student applies to will require a counselor recommendation, and that those who do require it may look upon it with great importance. However, many schools do not require the counselor recommendations, and those that do understand that the counselors usually do not know the students very well; colleges will not be fooled by lengthy answers.

Perhaps it is because I am a writer, but each of my responses was a lengthy paragraph (or five), and rather than filling out a survey about myself, this assessment felt like writing a paper, or rather, several papers. The only difference is that I will not receive a higher grade for completing this assessment thoroughly, as I do not receive a grade for it at all. That is probably why so many students have not yet finished theirs, even though the school year is already over. For the Counseling Office’s sake I hope the rest of the student body finishes their assessments; but for the students’ sakes I hope they never do.