This article is intended for juniors but has ramifications for all students as well.

Juniors, you have two months to impact your grades positively, or negatively. Spring break was last week. That ever present right of passage marker has past. You need to know that your grades, 9th through 11th grade, are what many universities use to determine admissibility. Yes, they look at your 7th term grades, but that initial transcript, 9th through 11th, is vitally important because the admissions committee, sometimes a single plebe, can sort you out of consideration in August 2013. For some, it's Game Over if you present a droopy junior year.

For the seniors out there who are eagerly awaiting your acceptances, you too need to finish strong as well because acceptances can be rescinded. Admissions committees, like scientists from a bygone 1950's sci-fi film, are out there! They're watching! They request a final high school transcript and if they see wilting, they reserve the right to rescind. Better universities and colleges try not to buy lemons.

So, the good news, you all have eight weeks to make things better! Why, just today, I noticed oodles of students in the library during conference period. Conference periods are for students to visit with specific teachers to work on classwork, concepts, papers and strategies. Sure, you can commiserate in the library. Who am I to cut into social time? Sadly, at exactly the same time, I noticed our college rep from ASU sitting in the Guidance Office, lonely. He put on a tie to see two students? We have 2,000 students at IRHS. What the H E double hockey sticks is going on!

So, spring fever is a myth. It's a group think concept pervasive in American high schools and universities. Students, you have to fight the peer pressure and urge to lay back and take it easy. There is no such thing as ditch day. School, literally, is your job and almost singularly your responsibility. Don't take this experience lightly, at all, ever. That's your college tip.

I met with a parent the other day who was telling me about "the real world", in contrast to our school's mission and performance, and it got me thinking. People tend to frame schools as apart from the real world. Of course you students don't get paid to go to school. You don't get health insurance. We transport you to and from school if you are eligible and we feed you cheaply. Work is different from school, obviously.

However, you do get performance reviews. Don't let me be the first to tell you that finals are around the corner and you have two months to turn your ship around. As a collective voice in the ironwood wilderness, we are asking that all of our students bear down over the next eight weeks and take the D to a C or the C to a B.

Get it done. Use conference periods and tutoring. Make the social sacrifices and buckle down and compete. Your brain will not explode. Discipline yourself to use your weekends and evenings to complete your assignments. We're not going to come out and tap on your windows at 9 p.m. every night asking if you've completed your assignments. Rather, you've been assigned homework and you need to get motivated. Fight that spring fever, and recognize that school is the real world and now is the time to work diligently. Seriously.