Inside Blair • Marisa Schweber-Koren
	Thanks, administrators, for a smooth start

It's the end of summer, and as most students whine and cry about going to back to the long halls of Montgomery Blair High School, others, in their last remaining days, compare schedules with friends.

Not this year. The Montgomery Blair counselor system has once again made a change that will make high school more interesting.

This year, students will not be receiving their schedules before the first day, and will instead get them in homeroom.

At first, this appears to be a huge inconvenience to the students who want to figure out how to get from the first floor arts hallway to the third floor 10's hallway, or want to know if their best friend has English with them. But in fact, this new system is much better.

Instead of getting the schedules over the summer, and then receiving a new roster the first day of school, this new system has simplified all of that. By only having one schedule to consult, fewer errors can be made and less confusion ensues.

For instance, if a student signed up for guitar and was instead put into basketball, she doesn't have to worry for a month about the wrong class; she needs only to go to the counselor's office on the first day of school and change the class.

The added advantage is also that the student may get to miss some class!

Of course, with every new improvement in the school system, the good comes the bad. It may be an advantage for the students not to see their schedules before the first day, but the counselors' office probably won't agree. With fewer people knowing their classes, more students on the first day will have problems that could have been dealt with earlier. Small issues such as a math class being too high a level may not be so difficult for the office to handle, but if a student needs to change classes and none on his or her level are available, that's when a problem can arise.

This schedule issue can relate to many problems at Blair–anything from school lunches (easy to cook; bad for the students' health) to exams. In this case, though, it is to Blair's credit that for once, they took into account the past instances and decided to make things a little easier on the students. And we all thank them for it.