I’m in physics class, sitting through yet another lecture. My teacher scribbles “Newton’s 3rd Law” on the board and the class collectively groans. After last week’s unit test, we don’t have any time to cool down before jumping into even more content. Unlike my previous science classes, each block is either a lab or an introduction of a new concept; there’s basically no time for much-needed review. 

All this to say, physics is definitely the most intensive science course I’ve taken at New Trier. The problem is, I’m a junior now, and the last thing I need on top of AP’s, extracurriculars, and SAT prep is an evening spent struggling with projectiles.

Now that first quarter is over, I can say with full confidence that physics is my least favorite subject, especially because physics is a particularly heavy course—even more so for someone who is not a math person, like myself. 

I know others who wish that when it came time to select our courses at the end of eighth grade, BCP (biology, chemistry, then physics) and PCB (physics, chemistry, then biology) were presented as two equally fine choices. Instead, I and everyone around me made the baseless assumption that, yes, of course, I would be taking biology freshman year. 

Why BCP is presented as the default path at New Trier is beyond me—maybe because it’s in alphabetical order—but what I do know is that I’m not the only one who regrets taking it as such. Every so often while leaving class, I’ll hear someone mutter under their breath, “I should have just gotten this over with freshman year.”  

Many of my classmates and I share this sentiment. Sure, biology included the pig unit, in which students had the privilege of dissecting a fetal pig and breathing in the smell of formaldehyde twice a week for 80 minutes, but most of the class was just memorization: there was nothing to grasp conceptually. 

Although I don’t consider myself a math person, I assumed junior year physics would be more manageable than it actually is. It’s just level three, I told myself. The people I knew who were traumatized by freshman year physics were in level four, and from what I could gather, the difference between those two were pretty vast. And anyway, I didn’t want to start off high school with physics —it just didn’t feel right.  

It wasn’t just the level, though, that scared me away from physics at the Northfield campus freshman year. The thought of putting off biology—a graduation requirement for New Trier—until junior year gave me an unreasonable amount of anxiety. BCP seemed like the safest path to take to ensure I got all my graduation requirements out of the way in time for senior year.  

Now, as I dive into the second quarter of my junior year, I’ve got a lot more on my plate than I did as a freshman. I’m taking three APs, all with heavy courseloads. I’m an editor for The New Trier News (that’s fun, though). I’m trying to do enough for my Chinese class so that I get accepted into its honors society. Good grades are important this year more than ever. On top of all that, learning about projectiles, mechanics, and circular motion is tipping me over the edge. 

Though it didn’t seem like it at the time, freshman year was pretty easy; my biggest source of anxiety was the social aspect of school rather than academics; not being in the same classes as my friends and being forced to make new ones as well as navigating the prison-like campus that was Northfield. 

Had I taken physics as a freshman, it definitely would have been my heaviest course load. Now, it’s just one rigorous class among many.  

Of course, everyone has different strengths. For some, physics might be significantly easier than biology and take up less studying time. In any case, I would recommend taking your weakest subject first because however hard freshman year may seem, it’s only going to get worse as you progress through your high school career.  

I hope we can normalize the physics-first path so that fewer future New Trier students have to struggle with this subject as well as juggle a host of other stressors that  junior year naturally triggers. It might seem daunting to upcoming freshmen, but they’ll be glad to be PCB students when they’re breezing through the genetics unit while the rest of their junior classmates are pulling their hair out over vectors. I would give anything to be in the biology lab again, mapping genetic diseases onto a fictionalized family tree using dry erase markers (yes, that’s as easy as it sounds).