Recently I learned that Daniel Pearl Magnet High School has only one college counselor. I always kind of assumed it and the confirmation never really struck me as surprising.

But the fact that she only comes on Mondays shot my body with this disgustingly high amount of worry.

Maybe it’s just my instinct as a man of the people, but as someone who doesn’t even worry that much about college, I’m much more concerned for other students.

There are kids who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing with their life and the fact that they can literally only seek college counselor Linda Zimring once a week (if they can even schedule an appointment with her before others) is something anyone can agree on being outrageous.

What’s even worse is the parents. Ironically, my parents are so passionate about college and even though I’m an 11th grader with all eyes in the family plastered upon the blank canvas in which my GPA will be violently splattered upon, I’m turned off by the idea of college as a whole.

However, I’m just as much turned off at the fact that my parents will be popping veins at levels and pressures so high that internal pieces of the Mars Rover will malfunction just because they couldn’t manage to get info from Zimring.

Zimring comes on her own time. She’s a retired college counselor and volunteers part-time at DPMHS. Right off the bat there’s a problem here. Now I do commend her fully on coming out every week to help out. But we cannot rely on just one volunteer for such a critical job.

Principal Deb Smith says that the only thing hindering the opportunity for a full-time counselor here is the small size of the student body. She is thinking of negotiating for a full-time counselor or sharing a counselor with Valley Alternative. These will be last resorts though.

Money shouldn’t be such an issue because of how important this job really is. If the school refuses to hire such a basic position, we either need to get more volunteers to fill up every day, which would be a mess, or work out some arrangement with Zimring, which I don’t see happening any time soon.