Spring brings all sorts of seasonal rituals: opening classroom windows, spending free periods playing on the lawn or in the courtyard, and, of course,  history research papers. The April history research paper is a longstanding St. Paul Academy and Summit School tradition, carrying through all four years. This year, however, the United States History faculty decided to make a change and move the junior history paper up to January and February in an attempt to even out the spring semester workload.

Although the US History curriculum has only gotten up to the turn of the century, topics for history papers ranged from early colonization of North America to fairly recent history. “I think it’s fun to read other people’s papers because you get to see what they’re interested in,” junior Hallie Sogin said.

Junior Danish Mahmood preferred having the paper later in the year, as it had been in the past. “I just did not like [the time change], because that made it overlap with the Gilded Age unit that we were supposed to learn. To have it overlap with the start of that unit made it so complicated—it made the start of the history paper process so hectic,” Mahmood said. “Our note-taking and all that was cut short, and, for me, it piled up in the end. It would have been nice to have your nice time later on,” he added.