Senior Skip days are a common tradition among high school students, giving seniors the option to take a day off. Orchestrated by senior class members, these days are offered once a quarter. At BVN, students’ participation varies, highlighting the internal struggle to attend class or stay home. Senior Landon Nelson defines skip days as a way to relax and recharge.
“Senior skip days are just a day you get off, like each quarter, and you just can hang out with friends, go home, skip most of your classes, or all,” Nelson said. “I think [students] view it positively as a fun and relaxing day.”
While these days seemed like an excellent opportunity for some, Nelson could not participate in the fun last semester.
“I had tests scheduled for both of my senior skip days,” Nelson said. “Those are hard to make up.”
The most significant factor in students not participating in the tradition is the risk of missing lectures, projects and tests. For Senior Emerson Harse, skipping a day is dependent on the type of classes a student takes.
“I feel like there’s a lot of classes that require a lot of attention,” Harse said. “So if you don’t go to a lesson.., you know you might feel like you might miss something that could be important for a test.”
In some cases, Nelson has felt that teachers have purposely planned curriculum to keep students from skipping.
“I think a lot of teachers don’t support it and try to make it hard to skip sometimes,” Nelson said. “I think a large number of teachers think four [skip days] is too much and disapprove of that, but I think a lot of them agree with at least kids being able to skip one or two days a year.”
When senior skip days are mentioned the controversy is always brought up, if seniors should be allowed to just not go to school.
“Mr. Smith was telling us people shouldn’t be calling out of school or trying to get it excused,” Nelson said. “His opinion was a lot of the experience or value of a skip day comes from taking the risk of unexcused absence.”
Some seniors only attend classes with a critical curriculum on skip days to avoid missing essential class time.
“All of the past senior skip days, there’s been a specific class I felt like I had to go to,” Harse said. “I came to school in the morning and then just went home afterward.”
For Harse, the frequency of the scheduled days can be inconvenient, leading him to seek a change.
“I would like to see just one or two senior skip days a year,” Harse said. “I believe that if there were fewer senior skip days, then maybe the teachers would work with the students a little more. And then you could see almost all seniors not going to school that day.”
