Exhaustion/ Sleep Deprivation

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>Hey,
I want to know if my course load will be too much for me. So I'm a freshman going into sophmore year, and am planning to go top tier like Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, etc.. oh and I have insomnia and normally go to sleep from 2:30-6:00, school, sleep a bit 10 to 20 minutes in like two or three classes, and thats it, if I go to bed early its 12:00, late its 4:00. Have a 4.0 currently, planning to go into Law, and freshman aren't allowed APs or Honors unless you skip frehsman year, so I'm taking all the ones I can.</p>

<p>So Sophmore year:
AP Euro
Honors Chem
Honors Pre-Cal
Aquatics/Lifeguarding
Adv. Orchestra
English 10
French 3</p>

<p>Junior Year:
AP US History
AP Chem
AP Cal AB
AP Lit (language)
Adv Orchestra
Honors French
Adv. Speech and Debate with Debate emphasis</p>

<p>Senior Year:
AP Comparitive Gov
AP Bio
AP Cal BC
AP Lit (literature)
Adv Orchestra
AP Econ
AP Psych</p>

<p>Do:
Interact Club
Speech and Debate: LD
Mock Trials
and Writing a novel, more than halfway done, planning to publish, yes, I love writing, history, english.</p>

<p>How do I deal with the stress and hw and extreme sleep deprivation I know I will suffer, because I'm in one of the top public schools in california and my school is 95% Asian, so we are extremely competitive here, and I mean EXTREMELY.</p>

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<p>Your sophomore schedule isn’t too bad, but what’s the point of putting yourself through the rest of this if you think it will hurt you more than benefit you?
Taking eleven AP classes isn’t going to help you if the rest of your application isn’t very good. All of their applicants will have taken challenging classes, and above a certain threshold they’re not going to care much about people who did more of the same stuff. The only reason to take eleven AP classes rather than seven (or something like that) is that you like them and they aren’t causing you undue amounts of stress. Otherwise you’re better off working on your ECs and essays. [url=&lt;a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1337077-would-writing-a-novel-be-something-to-put-on-an-application.html]Here[/url”&gt;Would writing a novel be something to put on an application? - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums]Here[/url</a>] is a thread about whether writing a novel is an EC.</p>

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<p>^^ The above poster gives very good advice. But, it was kind of funny reading advice in a thread re insomnia and sleep deprivation from a poster with the handle of halcyonheather because the homonym “halcion” is a sleeping pill.</p>

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<p>*homophone.</p>

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<p>Thanks - thought that is what I wrote. Should have re-read and edited.</p>

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<p>I did something very similar this year OP; I’m a sophomore who moved into 6 AP’s + a lot of courses at my local state college and community college.</p>

<p>Your question:
“How do I deal with the stress and hw and extreme sleep deprivation I know I will suffer, because I’m in one of the top public schools in california and my school is 95% Asian, so we are extremely competitive here, and I mean EXTREMELY.”</p>

<p>Ignoring the racist subtones as is common on CC, the sleep loss isn’t that bad. The whole competitive school thing is complete BS, by the way, not only because the Asian statistic is not only suggestive of some really bad things [i.e other races are somehow inferior or less competitive or even less able to do high level work], but also because a school being competitive doesn’t interfere with your work. Unless you are in a school where people will tear up your work and you feel the need for PGP signed emails, the competitiveness of a school just means that you are really jealous of a lot of successful people. It’s important to note that a school being competitive in fact helps you, since colleges tend to overcompensate for you and since the decision of a college to accept or deny you is 99.99% based on every other factor. </p>

<p>Anyway, time to answer your question [which I really dislike, since all it is doing is perpetuating the constant anxiety of CC and the subsequent humble-bragging and anxiety]. </p>

<p>One way that I deal with the “stress” is to not care so much. I hope you are taking courses that you really want to take and know well already, and in my case, that is true. That means that I’m really only taking my courses for myself, and thus, I know that any additional stress, while not only being bad to have since it is further stopping me from my goals, shouldn’t ever happen because I love what I do, and thus, there is no pain/stress/drudgery involved.</p>

<p>Also, you ask about “extreme sleep deprivation”. I usually get the same sleep times as you, and have pretty mild insomnia, if that’s any indicator of anything.</p>

<p>Lastly, I’d like to ask you about something. This is the last part of your sophomore schedule:</p>

<p>“Aquatics/Lifeguarding
Adv. Orchestra
English 10
French 3”</p>

<p>Based on the fact that I’ve seen honors courses on other parts of your schedule, I’m wondering why you’d find this to be extremely stressful; these courses are literally the easiest possible courses available [which is really bad for you, since if you go to a competitive high school and presumably, since you mentioned the difficulty, care about class rank, taking courses like these will guarantee that your guidance counselor will mark you as not having the most difficult classes]. Honors Pre-Calc will give you a max of 30 minutes in homework, and the same goes, if you have a really bad teacher, for Honors Chemistry. I took AP Euro this year, and not only is the class/material incredibly easier (I could self-study that better than my self-study of AP Psychology), the homework was pretty lax [We did most of the work in class, watching period movies and did pretty short answers to ~15 questions per HW].</p>

<p>My sophomore schedule, for comparison:</p>

<p>AP European History
UConn Macroeconomics
UConn Microeconomics
UConn Puppetry
Honors English 10
Honors Spanish 3
Pre-AP US History
Honors Pre-Calc
AP Human Geography
AP Physics B
UConn General Physics 1
UConn General Physics 2
AP Economics
Honors Eastern and Western Thought</p>

<p>Plus an AP Psychology self study, a course in Japanese history at Stanford and some other stuff.</p>

<p>I usually only spend 2-5 hours on homework, max, and my work can be as little as 10 minutes some days. I spent 3 hours a day watching YouTube videos, usually way more, had time to do a lot of ECs in really high roles, and only went to sleep late if I managed my time poorly [Like posting late night CC threads at 12:39 AM EDT…good thing it’s now 12:40…]</p>

<p>Lastly, the whole “my school won’t let me do…” is BS. If you can show the school that you are prepared to do well in a class, they’ll let you in, even under the table. With things like that, there are rules that may be enforced, but prove your worth and they’ll usually be more lax on you.</p>

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<p>

College Confidential’s idea of helpful advice.</p>

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<p>@halcyonheather‌ </p>

<p>I thought CC’s purpose wasn’t to give help, but fish for compliments?</p>

<p>In all seriousness, I attached that to show that someone with similar circumstances could do it, so don’t psych yourself out before you even try.</p>

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<p>i’m not fishing for compliments but rather asking if its too stressful, I’m sorry if I seem racist with the competitive jist, but it is competitive at my school if your in the race to get into a top tier college, what we all do is we tear you down if you are our competition, and break you and make you burn out by junior year, and we all started this “race” in elementary school, so yes we are competitive, come to my school and you’d understand but please don’t judge when you have not undergone the mentality encouraged at my school, undergo then judge. As for my school not letting me, unless you skip over the summer they don’t let you, like I have to take an Algebra 2 course over the summer, and take a test and get a 70% on it to get into PRe-Cal, 85% to get into Honors, so its not BS, as for your schedule, well if my school allowed that many classes I take them but unfortunately they don’t. As for sophmore year, I’m not worried with the 4 classes you mentioned, I am worried about Honors PRe-Cal, and Honors Chem because they are said to have really hard teachers, and rarely do people get As in the class, which is extremely worrying considering everyone at my school is a frickin’ math or science genius, not joking, I mean skipping classes is the norm for us, studying for SATs from 8th grade is also the norm, as if stuffing as much as you can into your schedule, as many APs as you can, as many competitions, insturments, languages, sports and so on into your schedule as you can, thats normal, so no I’m not fishing for compliemnts or exaggerating or being racist I am outright saying what my school is like. So I want the opinions of other that are NOT influenced by the crazy mentality of my school on whether my course load is too much, each AP and Honors gives 2-5 hours of homework a night on average at my school.</p>

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<p>

This is one sentence. I’m impressed.</p>

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<p>I honestly get weirded out hearing how people start studying for SATs in freaking middle school when that’s the time you could still be messing around a lot and have fun.</p>

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<p>@halcyonheather‌ </p>

<p>Wow. That is truly impressive.</p>

<p>Also, @hailey5799‌, considering I took my SATs in 7th grade and come from a pretty competitive system, I think I do understand. To your point about things being a race, I hope you understand that the performance of everyone else in your class doesn’t affect your college chances at all. Not even in terms of class rank, since if you have a high enough GPA and come from a competitive enough school, colleges take that into account. Thus, you need to see that you aren’t running in a race; you’re running yourself into the ground. Clearly you’re stressed by your situation; that’s fine. I’m not trying to mitigate you or your stress. The point of my schedule was to show you that you could succeed, that it is possible, and thus, don’t add stress on for no reason. </p>

<p>Your fear about the Chem and Pre-Calc class are pretty normal, and I understand how you feel. I’m in a very similar situation, and what I did to avoid that issue was get the teacher to know/like me immediately and then always work with them to make sure I was on the right track to an A in their class. Also, it’s important to note that as long as you have above a 3.8 GPA, colleges won’t really care too much.</p>

<p>However, you said this:
“I mean skipping classes is the norm for us, studying for SATs from 8th grade is also the norm, as if stuffing as much as you can into your schedule, as many APs as you can, as many competitions, insturments, languages, sports and so on into your schedule as you can, thats normal, so no I’m not fishing for compliemnts or exaggerating or being racist I am outright saying what my school is like. So I want the opinions of other that are NOT influenced by the crazy mentality of my school on whether my course load is too much, each AP and Honors gives 2-5 hours of homework a night on average at my school.”</p>

<p>If you are in this kind of situation, why do you continue it? I am taking 21 APs by the end of high school, I compete in every competition available, play piano, trumpet and violin, speak 4 languages and play a variety of sports, but at the end of the day, what does it matter? The whole point of these things are that they make me happy. I like the sound of my trumpet as I pretend I’m Miles Davis. I enjoy reading my AP Psychology textbook. </p>

<p>Do you enjoy the situation that you are in? You are free to live your life, but remember, you are free. You also are the one that has to make decisions in life, not anyone else, and eventually you have to face the fact that your situation can be changed by you. If you are not happy, change it. If your school is too crazy for you, talk to your parents, counselors and teachers and try to make an environment more conducive to your happiness. I know what it’s like to slog it out for 6 hours and then come home to do it again. The whole point of life, however, isn’t this endless doldrum, but rather, to achieve a higher quality of life. If you feel you aren’t in a place of happiness, please, for the love of god, don’t push yourself further down that hole. </p>

<p>It’s not that fun on the other side.</p>

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<p>@Apollo11 Thank you.</p>

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<p>@hailey5799‌ </p>

<p>You’re welcome. I’m available anytime if you need anything.</p>

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<p>@Apollo11 even when you graduate?</p>

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<p>@wcao9311‌ </p>

<p>Technically, I’m class of 2016, but I’ll be graduating from college anywhere between 2016 and 2020.</p>