Choosing Between VHS AP Cybersecurity and Honors Spanish 3 for Junior Year: What I Learned
Last February, I found my 16-year-old son Leo hunched over our kitchen table, a crumpled VHS course selection sheet spread between his half-eaten bag of Goldfish and my cold morning coffee. He’d been staring at the same two lines for 20 minutes, scrolling back and forth between the VHS course catalog on his phone and the parent Facebook thread about junior year course loads. One line: AP Cybersecurity. Two: Honors Spanish 3.
“All my friends are picking Cybersecurity,” he said, not looking up. “Mr. Henderson says it’s good for comp sci, which I might do, and it’s weighted. More weighted points means higher GPA, right?”
I leaned against the counter. “What about Spanish? You got a B+ last year in Spanish 2, and you kept saying you wanted to do that Costa Rica language immersion trip after senior year. If you stop now, you won’t be ready for that.”
He sighed and pushed the paper away. “But Honors Spanish 3 is supposed to have so much reading. What if I tank my GPA and can’t get into any state school?”
That’s the thing about junior year course selection, right? Every choice feels like it’s going to make or break their college chances. I’d spent the previous week scrolling that same parent thread, seeing all the moms talking about how their kids were taking four APs junior year, and I’d started to panic that Leo wasn’t “challenging himself enough” if he didn’t pick the AP.
I emailed his VHS counselor Ms. Lopez the next morning, and she squeezed me in for a 15-minute slot before first period. Her office smelled like old copy paper and peppermint, and she pulled up Leo’s transcript without me even asking. First, she walked through the basics that I’d totally forgotten to check: what do colleges actually require, anyway? Most four-year public universities in our state require two years of a single foreign language for admission. Most private schools and top public programs require three. If Leo stopped at Spanish 2, he’d have to make up those credits in college, where a single three-credit course costs 10 times what it costs at the high school, and it would take up space he could use for his major classes. That was a hard fact I hadn’t considered, caught up in the AP hype.
But she also didn’t knock the AP Cybersecurity class. She said Mr. Henderson runs one of the best electives in the department, that it’s all hands-on labs instead of constant memorization, that most kids who go to class pass the exam. The problem, she said, was that Leo already signed up for AP Lang and AP Bio this year. Adding a third AP would mean 5-6 extra hours of homework a week on top of cross country practice, which he does every single day after school.
I left that meeting with two concrete things to do, instead of just guessing. First, we’d go to the VHS course fair that coming Thursday, to sit in on both classes’ info sessions. Second, we’d text the two older boys down the street: one took AP Cybersecurity last year, one took Honors Spanish 3. No fancy surveys, just two questions: how much homework do you actually have a week, and what’s the hardest part of the class?
The answers were way more honest than any course catalog. The kid who took Cybersecurity said he had maybe two hours of homework a week, most of that was finishing up labs he started in class. He said the exam wasn’t that bad if you paid attention. The kid who took Spanish 3 said it was three to four hours a week of vocabulary and reading, but the teacher didn’t assign pointless grammar drills, and they watched a lot of Spanish-language movies and did cooking projects for culture. He said if you actually want to get better at speaking, it’s worth it.
Leo thought about that for a day, and then he came up with a middle ground I hadn’t even considered. He’d pick Honors Spanish 3, to check the three-year requirement box, keep his options open for the Costa Rica trip, and not overload his homework load. Then, he’d take the free introductory cybersecurity dual enrollment course at the local community college, which meets once a week on Saturday morning for two hours, only has an hour of homework a week, and counts for both college credit and a weighted GPA at VHS. He’s also in the VHS cybersecurity club, which meets twice a week after school, so he gets the hands-on building and problem solving he wanted.
It’s not the choice most of his friends made. Half the guys he hangs out with picked AP Cybersecurity and dropped Spanish. But what I’ve learned from this is that you don’t have to follow the crowd, and there are almost always more options than the two that are on the course sheet. The concrete steps that worked for us can work for anyone else stuck in this spot: first, pull up the admissions page for 3-5 colleges your kid is actually likely to attend, and write down the exact requirements they list. Don’t go by what other parents say, go by what the colleges actually post. Second, find one or two current students who took both classes and ask them the real questions about homework load, not just if it’s a good class. Third, always ask about alternatives: dual enrollment, clubs, summer courses that count for credit, that let your kid explore the subject they’re interested in without overloading their schedule during the school year.
It’s mid-November now, halfway through junior year. Leo has an A- in Honors Spanish 3, he aced his first dual enrollment cybersecurity midterm, he made the varsity cross country team, and he still has time to play Valorant with his friends for a couple hours every weekend. He hasn’t had a panic attack about homework all semester, which is a big improvement from last year when he overloaded on honors classes. We won’t know if this was the “right” choice until he applies to college next year. Maybe it’ll turn out that admissions officers would have preferred the AP on his transcript. But right now, it’s working. No one is burnt out, he’s still doing what he enjoys, and he’s checked off the requirement he needs for college. That’s enough for me right now.
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