Extracurriculars

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I got a summer internship at my city hall, and it's been a great experience. But school is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I'm not sure if I should sign up to continue my internship. It takes about 5 hours out of my week and I am a very busy person during the school year; I usually stay after school until almost 5 pm with my extracurriculars, and I have SAT prep, math tutor, and I might be doing maybe 2 or 3 AP's outside of school at a local tutoring place; also I volunteer regularly at an organization. However, I know that colleges like to see commitment; should I stay committed to city hall and continue my internship until I graduate? (I'm an incoming sophomore.) I think I want to work for the government once I get out of college, so I think being at city hall would be a great experience. But I just don't know if I have time for it. </p>

<p>My time management skills are not the best, but this year I'm looking to improve them by ten-fold. I will keep a planner and plan out everything. I am looking to be a lot more organized than I was freshman year. Does anyone also have time-management tips for me?</p>

<p>And one last question-- how do I prevent myself from getting overloaded with extracurriculars and not focusing on my schoolwork? I almost jeopardized my GPA last year because I was spending too much time with my clubs and organizations.</p>

2

<p>If you really really like working at the city hall, continue it- just keep in mind you might have to sacrifice some of your other activities to do so. As for balancing work with extracurriculars- if you don’t have time to do all your work well, you need to think about quitting some clubs or finding other places/times to get your homework done (actually study in your free block, on the bus, before clubs start, in class, etc.) Or you can try not taking AP’s outside of school and laying off the SAT prep until next summer.</p>

<p>As for time management- I have never found any of the ‘study for x amount of time, rest for y, repeat’ to work, but it helps to do some work for classes I hate, and then do something for another class that I like more (e.g. half an hour of algebra, then a bit of art). That way you don’t waste time, but you don’t get easily distracted either.</p>