Princeton High School has a truly astounding assortment of elective classes, to the point where many students have never even heard of some of them. Ask the average PHS student if they’ve considered taking Cisco III, Contemporary Crisis, or even more “popular” electives like Dance, and they’ll probably say no. This is a trend that needs reversing, because PHS’ more unique electives are arguably the best thing about the school. More students need to step outside of their comfort zones and explore these courses.

PHS electives serve as perfect places to discover new passions. Although everyone at our school has to take math, history, science, English, and physical education, our professional careers probably won’t be based solely around what we learned in these classes. Often, students that take more unique electives discover exciting career or extracurricular paths that they wouldn’t have otherwise considered. For example, students that have never coded in their entire life may sign up for courses like Intro to Java or App Development, and realize they enjoy programming.

These opportunities also can help to broaden existing interests. Taking an extracurricular like East Asian Studies or Latin America can help students step outside of the standardized, Eurocentric curriculums that schools across New Jersey have to follow, and discover new ways of representing history. Likewise, a class like Filmmaking or Journalism can help students learn about different ways to represent stories than the books and poems we read in English class.

An extracurricular like East Asian Studies or Latin America can help students step outside of the standardized, eurocentric cirriculums that schools all over New Jersey have to follow, and find parts of history that are more interesing to them. Likewise, a class like Filmmaking or Journalism can help students learn about different ways to represent stories than the books and poems we all read in english class.

Alternatively, many extracurriculars like Forensics or Public Speaking can just serve as a good time. Even though some students will find a new passion for scientifically detecting crime or oratory, everyone who takes one of the many idiosyncratic electives PHS has to offer will have a good time doing so. Interesting electives can serve as a great stress reliever after the long days many PHS students are subjected to.

PHS students are mandated to take two electives per year, but more unique courses are often dodged in favor of classes you could find at almost every high school in the country, for a couple of reasons.

Many misguided PHS students think that they have to take classes at Princeton University in order to get into a “good” college. This leads much of our student body to pour hours and hours into subjects they don’t actually like that much. Some kids AP Stats in junior year simply to exhaust the math curriculum and get into a class at the university, when taking a unique elective in that slot would actually be more beneficial for both their mental health and academic pursuits. Plenty of kids take advanced math classes, but a student who learns everything there is to know about Game Design might be more appealing to an Ivy League.

Plenty of students are scared to try something out of their comfort zone. Unless an elective perfectly lines up with everything a student is passionate about, they refuse to branch out and try new types of classes, instead sticking to what they’re already sucessful at. This leads to self proclaimed “theater kids” just taking Choir and Musical Theater as their electives for all four years, even though they might discover that replacing Musical Theater with Engineering one year would be a more rewarding choice for them in the long run.

The widespread attitude at PHS that students need to take as many AP classes as possible also hurts students’ involvement in these kinds of electives. Classes like AP Macroeconomics, while fun courses, often attract students that don’t end up getting a lot out of them, and who only wanted to put yet another AP on their schedule.

There are tons of schools that only offer Band and Choir extracurriculars. Plenty of students that would absolutely love to take Cisco III, or Contemporary Crisis, or Dance. We’re privileged at PHS to have the number of distinctive extracurriculars that we do, and it’s high time that students started taking full advantage of them.