Sitting in her CHS Latin class sophomore year, Anna Stansfield knew that the program wouldn’t exist the next year. After her freshman year, the CHS Latin teacher left, leaving the new history teacher to teach both Latin and History at both CHS and pioneer. She knew that he wouldn’t be there for more than a year, causing the Latin program to disappear. Stansfield didn’t want to stop taking Latin, she just had to find a new way to take it. 

So she decided that taking Latin at the University of Michigan would be the best idea for her because it was a more accessible class in both location and time.   

Stansfield knew that she wanted to take Latin and since it was a language class, she had to take a placement test so they could see what section she should be placed in. She ended up getting placed into Latin 103 at the University of Michigan. Stansfield then had to find the time and day that worked best for her, which she did by searching in the LSA course guide. Finally, she had to email the professor, and see if they had a spot in their class for her. 

Stansfield is also taking a psychology class at Michigan. “I knew that I wanted to take a psychology class — I’ve always found psychology interesting and since CHS doesn’t have a psychology class I haven’t been able to take it until now. This class has been a great experience, it’s a very different experience from my Latin class,” said Stansfield. “I have definitely found it more difficult than any class I’ve taken at CHS, but it’s worth it.” 

Both of Stansfield’s professors responded quickly and were continuously responsive when she was trying to figure out what she needed to do. Her Latin class is small, around 10-12 students. Her psychology class, on the other hand, is a 300 person lecture class and a smaller discussion class with around 20 students. Stansfield’s psychology class required her to participate in studies through a subject pool, but since Stansfield isn’t 18 she cannot participate in the studies. That part of the course was excluded for her. 

“Taking classes at the University of Michigan has been an amazing experience, it really gives you a taste of what college is like in the aspect of the environment and how difficult the classes are,” Stansfield said. 

Michaela Melcher is currently a senior at CHS, she wanted to branch out of the classes that CHS had and decided to look at what she could take at the University of Michigan. “I took Korean because my friend Nanako was taking it at the time and I wanted to take that class with her. I really liked it but it was really hard,” Michaela Melcher said. Mondays were for project work time for their final project, a ten-minute video of them speaking. Wednesdays were when they would learn vocabulary, they would learn 100 words every week, and then would have a quiz the next week.  Melcher had never taken Korean before this experience, it was a deep dive into the Korean language. She went from knowing very little to a lot. She has not continued Korean since but is very grateful for her experience that semester. 

Melcher’s class was taught by a Michigan professor but was just for high school students. “ It gave me a little bit of a taste of what college was like: with the workload and how classes work, but not so much about the people because the five other students in my class were high schoolers.” 

“It was a tough class, we had to learn a lot of vocabulary in a small amount of time. It was still a really great experience, it helped me understand more how difficult college-level courses are. I learned a lot. The professor loved the class so much which is what made it fun,” Melchor echoed Stansfield.