Waiting in line at Wendy’s on Thursday, a group of Chapel Hill High School seniors listed what they were looking forward to.
College. Graduation. Summer.
Perhaps not surprisingly, no one mentioned anything about studying. “You have to get a C, so that’s all there really is to strive for,” said Chapel Hill High senior Megan Strubel.
With only two months left of the school year, making college decisions, planning for graduation and organizing the parties that go along with it all seem more important than classes to many seniors. Planning for some of those parties began long ago.
High school prom committees in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City and Orange County schools started fundraising before the school year began and chose venues, themes and DJs in the fall. As the semester draws to a close, organizers are looking forward to the end of the planning process. Stephan Kehs, a Spanish teacher and head of the prom committee at East Chapel Hill High School, said, “We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Another end-of-year celebration, Project Graduation, has been in the works since October. Project Graduation is the name given to substance-free after-graduation parties thrown for high school students across the country. Seniors in both the city and county schools will celebrate their graduations at one of the affairs.
The county seniors will party at the Triangle Sportsplex in Hillsborough, and the city school graduates will take advantage of UNC’s own Student Union. “We provide an opportunity for graduates to have fun in a safe and secure environment,” said Donna Williams, the healthful living director for county schools.
She said she expects 90 percent of graduating seniors to attend. Both events are completely free for students and are funded primarily through donations. The goal is to feature enough activities to keep the grads busy from 10 p.m. until 4 a.m. “I don’t want people to be bored,” said Julie Emerson, a Chapel Hill High School senior and co-chairwoman of Project Graduation.
Emerson acknowledged that her classmates are ready for the school year to end. “People aren’t drastically slacking off to the brink of failing, but they are more apathetic about their grades,” she said. This end-of-year malaise is nothing new to teachers, Kehs said. “Usually when the weather starts to get nice, we see it, but not yet in my classes,” he said. There’s at least one thing keeping Chapel Hill High senior Aaron Summer from slacking off completely. “I mean, I don’t want to fail.”
