In a world where seniors and juniors are in the same AP English class, catastrophe reigns. A junior boy tries to talk about an appeal to ethos, but is drowned out by the unrelenting shrieks coming from the whistles dangling around the senior girls’ necks.

The teacher tries to speak, but is halted as a senior boy leads a barbershop quartet in his promposal to the nearest junior girl.

Cerberus, the snarling dog, guards what has been deemed the senior section of the classroom.

This may be a slight exaggeration, but when multiple grades are thrown into one classroom, it is going to affect the class dynamic. Sometimes it seems like grades are at war with one another.

The recent curriculum change that opens up AP Language and AP Literature to both juniors and seniors brings this dynamic into focus: they were the last AP classes to be limited to a specific grade — AP Lang was for juniors and AP Lit for seniors.

But this isn’t new. It’s just new to English. Freshmen and seniors have painted next to each other in watercolor for years, and sophomores and juniors have shared a lab table in forensics.

At Staples, there are no eighth grade hallways or team pods like in middle school. It is impossible to weave through passing time without overhearing a conversation from at least a few members of the other species–we mean grades.

Even with this mixing, when juniors, who have 25 notecards for their research paper due Monday, hear about a sophomore’s US project, it’s hard not to feel like they’re on another planet.

Rewind a year, and the juniors were in the exact same position–freaking out about the causes of the Great Depression.

Fast forward a year and the juniors will think the research paper sounds like a nice break from their college supplements.

In the real world, four years shouldn’t feel like a huge age difference. But in high school, where everything is a bigger deal than it should be, it does.

It’s important for seniors pushing their way to the front row of the bleachers to remember the days when they wouldn’t dare pull that stunt. It’s important for freshmen who just got cut in the sandwich line to remember that one day that will be you.

We hope this is a step towards greater empathy and being able to see things from someone else’s corner of the globe, but learning to see things from someone else’s corner of the cafeteria is a good start.