Picture this: It’s June. It’s about 85 degrees inside your math class and 10 degrees warmer outside. The windows are open, but all that is coming in is hot air. You are taking a test, but you’re focused on the sweat accumulating on your seat rather than if A or B is the correct answer. You have 20 minutes left to finish the test, and you are only on question six. You want to get up and get a cup of water, but now you only have 10 minutes left and you are still on question six. You can't focus at all and the heat is making you tired, so you put your head down on the desk, which seems to be cooler than the room. You accidentally fall asleep! You wake up and hear “five minutes left,” and you realize…you still have 14 questions left. 

This scenario can be played out by hundreds of students in Boston. As the warmer months begin to approach, faster than usual, teachers and students must prepare themselves to adapt to the heat and recognize the risk of heat stress. But even with adaptation, the struggle to focus in class, and the distraction that is created because of the heat makes matters even more uncomfortable than they have to be. 

Youth across Boston, have been researching the impacts generated due to heat stress. Some of the impacts include risks of heat strokes, heat exhaustion, heat cramps and heat rash. Studies suggest that heat exposure can reduce the rate of learning and skill formation and greatly harm classroom productivity for teachers and students.

When we see schools like, New Mission, Boston Community Leadership Academy, or Boston Green Academy that get super hot, especially when the heat rises to the higher levels, there is a huge strain of frustration and agitation that is caused. For many Boston public schools, air conditioning is only in classrooms where teachers are willing to buy an AC with their own money. Something must be done to prevent the inherent problem at hand. 

The Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC), and the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCosh), have chosen to collaborate on this issue. The first step being, collecting surveys and recognizing the voices of students all around BPS. If you are interested in learning more, join us at a BSAC meeting. We meet Mondays 4-6 pm at the BPS Bolling Building, 2300 Washington Street, Roxbury. You can also email us at bsac@bostonpublicschools.org

Dear Rising Seniors,

We are all hurtling towards one thing: student loan debt. That is the sad reality of our world. However, a college education is a common path towards a better future and upward mobility. While you stress over not knowing what to do to get ready for college, let me help by telling you what I’ve learned, so you can get the most out of your college application experience. 

A: Honestly, you should start during the summer before your senior year. My school actually gave us summer work for the college process including a Common App essay draft, a list of activities we did in high school and an autobiography to help the counselors get to know us. I don’t want to sound like your guidance counselor, but you should start drafting your Common App essay over the summer.

The Common App is the college application service used by most schools across the country. There are a bunch of essay prompts that you can choose from, and they’ll come up with a quick Google search. When you write your essay, avoid writing about something that anyone could see by looking at your transcript. For example, don’t write about how your grades dipped sophomore year and how you bounced back. That is something an admissions counselor can see by looking at your record. Even if you really feel the need to explain yourself, this should not beat out an essay about something important to you such as an ideological concept, personal philosophy or an anecdote that describes who you are or a life-changing experience. 

A: No! Colleges require that you send them your first semester grades. This means that grades matter up until you finish midterm exams. Even if you apply to schools early, your counselor will report your first quarter grades. This doesn’t mean you can slack off afterward, though. The threat of your acceptance being rescinded always looms over your head which means you should stay focused on your grades. Your second-semester grades aren’t as important; however, if your grades drop significantly, you run the risk of the school you worked so hard to get into deciding to reject you at the last minute. 

A: It’s very hard but not impossible. The advice I would give is just to take things one at a time. When you sit down to do work, focus on one thing. Don’t try to scatter your brain among all your school subjects and college. Drown out school when doing college essays. Drown out college essays when doing homework for school. 

A: The SAT, originally named the Scholastic Aptitude Test, is ever-changing. Fortunately, more and more colleges are realizing that the SAT is not a clear indicator of intelligence or college readiness. Nevertheless, colleges are businesses, and they will prefer to see higher SAT grades so that their SAT average for accepted students goes up. High averages increase the amount of funding they get from the government and private groups.

If you want help mastering the SAT, the famous Khan Academy hosts a free SAT prep service. Make an account on khanacademy.org/sat and start practicing ASAP. The latest you should take the SAT is in October of your senior year. I also recommend using Google to find full SAT tests from previous years, which come with the answer sheet. Taking the test multiple times will help you get a feel for what will be covered and also give you an idea of what your potential score is. 

A: Something we high school students are often told is how different the process of applying to college is now. Nobody can relate across generations to the college process experience, which doesn’t allow for consistent development of SAT mastery. Currently, students take an SAT with a max score of 1600 as per the requirements of almost every college/university. Students are also expected to write an essay of 250-650 words.

Other options include the ACT (American College Testing), another standardized test that incorporates science. Additionally, most colleges require supplemental essays to their own questions. If students apply to a “test-optional” school that doesn’t require the SAT or ACT, they are almost always required to write an essay as a substitute.

Based on their GPA and SAT/ACT scores, students can find acceptance projections through Naviance, the website utilized by many schools to organize applications. Students are writing these essays up until deadlines, likely a result of electronically induced procrastination – the double nature of technological progress. So many students are working last minute, in fact, that the Common App website can slow down, delaying submissions or even shut down completely. 

I hope this burst any bubbles you might have had toward what senior year would be like. You might find yourself asking why all of this matters. Well in our world today, the job market is getting consistently more and more competitive. So competitive in fact, that fields of study at universities are beginning to fill up. For example, computer science and engineering are two of the hardest majors to apply to at any school, because so many people want to get into those job markets. Your later life will be determined by your job and your job, or any other work you might do is heavily dependent on what you choose to do in your post-high school life, namely, your experience in college. As it stands now, most businesses are looking to hire college graduates for their 9-5 posts. This makes it extremely difficult for people without a degree to make it in the average job market. Of course, there are other paths that don’t involve college, and I’m in no position to tell you where to take your own life, but even in well-paid professions that don’t require a college degree, raises are available for degree holders. 

I want to urge you to be calm as you navigate through this very important stage of your life. Take it very seriously, but don’t change who you are over something that will last only four years. While the effects of high school and college will shape your life, they should not be the driving factor. The driving factor should be you and your own choices. 

Community service can be daunting. Similar to the college process, community service is often put off until we get closer to graduation. Counselors see students as invisible until senior year, and then pounce on them to demand college applications and graduation requirements.

You may be asking, what is community service? Community service requirements vary from school to school. My school, Snowden International, requires students to perform 100 to 150 hours in order to graduate. Community service is when an individual offers a service to the neighborhood or certain nonprofit organizations, like local animal shelters or homeless shelters. Community service is not paid — any form of monetary compensation means it's not community service. But how do we find a location where we can serve? 

High school youth often have a hard time finding community service opportunities. Competition with college students, age restrictions and parental requirements all make community service harder to find than it should be. Animal shelters are the usual go-to for high school students. Shelters like ARL Boston and MSPCA-Angell take volunteers seasonally. Unfortunately, these positions tend to have a screening process and a tedious application process that can make it difficult for students. The competition with veterinary-students-in-the-making makes it nearly impossible to snag a spot. However, there are plenty of places to volunteer around Boston! 

First, did you know that you can get community service hours from your job? Oftentimes, unpaid work or community-oriented jobs will count as service hours. These opportunities don’t come along all the time, so it’s always a good idea to ask your employer. Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, offers community service hours for teens in Boston on an application basis. The application opens in the fall of each academic year.

Also, local shelters will always take in volunteers! Rosie’s Place, a women’s shelter in South End, accepts volunteers year-round. You can find flexible hours and self-schedule as an individual volunteer, and often you get free snacks too! Serving as an individual volunteer builds confidence — you can’t rely on your friends to pull the weight for you. On their website, there is a short application. After it is reviewed, you’ll be given an account to schedule yourself as a volunteer. Most volunteer options are doable as a teen, and there is always a supervisor available to assist with questions and teach you new tasks.

At Rosie’s Place, there are two main options for youth volunteers in the kitchen: preparing and serving food or assisting in the food pantry. Youth can also help sign in visitors. In the kitchen, I alternated between washing dishes in the back and serving and cleaning up in the front. 

Surprisingly, community service is broad enough to find an opportunity in the area you’re interested in. Community service gives a sense of responsibility to the volunteer. Having people dependent on your work makes you appreciate the features in our communities that we usually overlook. Animal shelters are super-competitive to even get an interview, so if you’re in a time crunch, applying to a local shelter is your best bet. Local shelters offer less-rigid hours, and more individuals are able to register as volunteers.