Honestly, managing school and sleep is a major problem for me. I’ve always been told “Mental health/sleep comes before school” but for me, school directly affects both of those. If I don’t have my work done and try to go to sleep, I literally get so anxious that I don’t sleep and sometimes finish my work. How would I deal with this and how do you normally balance homework and sleep?
Do your hw during your teacher’s lectures, I do that and I don’t have any work to do at home except review concepts.
There shouldn’t be any reason that you aren’t getting enough sleep, provided that you are a good student.
Let’s take a look at your schedule.
English II H shouldn’t be hard at all, homework should mainly revolve around projects if I am correct. On average, maybe 10 minutes a night (b/c there are many nights w/o homework).
Chemistry Honors is a bit harder, but again, 30-45 mins per night should be enough.
AP World History, in the case of any sort of history-related subject (APUSH, Euro, CompGov), I can’t really say because I never study and barely do my homework and easily get A’s. This is probably because I am a huge history buff. So I can’t really give you any advice on this subject(it is most likely that you spend a lot more time in WAP). Just for this discussion, let’s say 30 minutes.
Algebra II-Should be around 30-60 minutes each night depending on the situation, maybe an extra hour before test day.
Spanish III Honors-it’s a tough one, so maybe an hour a night.
Band-When I was in orchestra, it was an hour a night for me.
AP Psychology-the main issue is procrastinating on notes, so just spread it out, 15-30 minutes a night should be good.
Overall, your homework load should be between 235 minutes (~4 hours) and 295 minutes (~5 hours) for all subjects (including band). 4-5 hours each day is nothing out of the ordinary. Let’s say you get home at 5pm. Tack on 5 hours for homework until 10 pm, then add an hour for food/shower/bathroom etc. etc. so that adds up to 11pm. Maybe an hour of leisure until mid-night, and you are pretty much set. If you have clubs or EC’s, expect to maybe go to sleep at 1am or so.
Overall, that seems like a pretty good fit (there’s nothing wrong with sleeping at 1-3 am, as long as you get enough sleep/waking up a bit later). Basically, 6-7 hours of sleep should be fine for you.
If you can’t manage your current schedule, you are going to be in a world of hurt when you have to take all AP classes in your schedule.
I don’t know how it is for your school, but we get very little homework in Algebra, chem and English. Most times its no more than 1 hr a day. Sometimes 3-4 if there is an essay/test. Most times I just do it at lunch or some easy class, so there is no reason you should feel anxious or get less than 10-12 hours of sleep.
@RMNitZ: actually, 6-7 hours of sleep for an adolescent damages your brain and can damage your body. Going to bed past 10-11pm is bad in general, and 1-3 am is crazy.
That’s an extremely rigorous schedule for a 10th grader, especially since band takes up a lot of time.
Do you have time during the day?
Is the library open after class so you can work there before band?
Do you study with laptop/phone off?
Sure, but everyone wanting to be competitive in academics is doing it. OP is already calling his life a “descent to hell” so I’m sure he understands.
Tbh, I don’t know any student who is has excellent GPA and EC’s while going to bed at 10pm.
Sleeping at 10pm means only around 4 hours of work time (1 hour for eating and basic necessities, after getting home at 5pm). 4 hours of work time doesn’t even leave time for EC’s, which would cut the homework time down to 2.5 to 3 hours of homework time per day.
Once a person starts taking 5, 6, or 7 APs, I think allocating anything less that 3 hours would leave that student unable to maintain high grades.
I would like to caution the posters who are saying to do homework in class or that 30 minutes per day for chemistry is normal. There is a big variance from school to school.
I presume that schedule is pulled from another post. It is an aggressive schedule. I’m not sure what GT is? Looking at next year’s schedule now is part of the solution since you are almost at the summer break.
Sorry, but I don’t find that schedule overly rigorous. Come home from school, turn off your electronic devices. Do your homework. Have a designated space, such as a dining table as opposed to your bedroom. Shouldn’t be a problem unless you are checking your social media every 10 minutes. I am tired of hearing about kids whining. It’s all about time management.
Don’t become an IB student.
That’s why top schools only expect 6-8 AP’s total.
There’s no need to take 5, 6, or especially 7 AP’s jr and senior years.
Take 1-2 if they’re available freshman/sophomore years, then 3-4 judiciously chosen AP’s each of junior and senior year covers everything you need.
As Stanford puts it “it’s not a game of who has the most AP’s, wins.”
Not everyone trying to be competitive academically “does it”, and those who don’t need to, get into the top colleges in the country.
I have to agree with @CottonTales – I bet OP is distracted, most likely by social media. OP’s schedule isn’t all that rigorous. Also agree with @MYOS1634 that 6-7 hours of sleep is not healthy for growing teens.
OP - you can learn to sleep better. Seriously, it’s about mental discipline. When your head hits the pillow, you have to command your brain to stop thinking about anything related to school.
I worked on it with dd18. When she was in 8th grade, she used to stay up past 1am on social media. These days - she’s a junior taking APUSH, AP chem, AP lang and AP calc BC – she goes to bed at 10pm most nights, completely passed out within 10 min. 9:30pm if she has a major test the following day, sometimes 11pm to watch an episode of CSI with me.
I think physical exercise also helps you sleep better. Dd18 does 2 hrs of swim practice 6 days a week and is exhausted by the time she gets home. You don’t have to be on a sports team, just go the gym or take a cycling class. Make sure it’s something aerobic and fairly intense.
And chill out a little. An occasional missed homework or a B on a test is not going to derail your college plans.
@bestmom888 @CottonTales @moosicnerd
I use block and focus from chrome
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-focus/dcpbedhdekgkhigjgmlcbmcjoeaebbfm
Whenever you click it, it will block all non-essential sites for a certain period of time, and giving you a break every once in a while. For example, I have it on 25/5.
So after every 25 minutes of studying, it unblocks (youtube, twitter, reddit etc.) for 5 minutes so I can have a break, before it starts up another cycle. You can customize both the blocked sites and the time cycles so it is very useful.
I would definitely recommend it for someone who is having trouble focusing.