We’ve all been there–the transition to high school. So many things have changed, and we need time to adjust to all of these changes. Luckily, the school has its own program, RAMP, to help freshman students transition. The question that I bring up: does RAMP have anything to improve?

I think that the intentions of the program are clearly for the good of students because their goal is to educate the freshmen, but the execution of this is not the best because there might be some flaws in the program.

Some freshmen and I would agree that RAMP truly does last long and needs some shortening.

The first time I went to RAMP, it was productive. It taught me things about the school, and it introduced me to new people, but later on, it started to get repetitive–same people and similar subjects. Perhaps RAMP should just be a semester-long, not a whole year.

Even though I have the critique on the length of RAMP mentoring, something that I don’t agree with would be the opinion of completely banning RAMP. I think that regardless of how freshmen complain about all the time RAMP takes, we, freshmen, do need a system to help ease the transition into high school because we are going through tremendous changes and need guidance. 

I propose the first step is to shorten RAMP, making the time that we do spend in the program that much more valuable. With the time change, freshmen should hopefully realize that the questions they need to be answered should be asked in that timely manner. While doing this would definitely be a change, I see this being a positive edit to an important step in a freshman student’s high school career. If necessary, a second-semester RAMP program could be an optional program for students as well. 

While there are many pros and cons to RAMP, the intent of RAMP’s creation is purely positive. With some timing edits, RAMP could be something all freshmen would look forward to for guidance and knowledge.