Managing Time for High School

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

Hello everybody.

I am currently a rising 9th grader attending a local middle school notorious for its outrageously low scores on our state’s standardized tests. So, as you might’ve guess, I breeze through every single class of mine, rarely spending time outside of school to do school-work, and when I do, most often it’s a project. The maximum amount of time I had possibly spent for school-work is 45 minutes. The classes I’m taking are…

  • World History I
  • Earth Science
  • Honors English
  • Algebra 2
  • Spanish B (Second part of Spanish I, as I took Spanish A in my 7th grade year)

Anyways, I have a question in regards to high school. As you can probably assume from the very fact that I’m writing this, I am extremely worried about high school. About a month ago, I was notified that I was accepted from two schools I applied to, one being a governor’s school for government and international studies, and the other one being a magnet school for information technology. So with my interest being in IT, I proudly accepted the latter option, and denied the other one with no hesistation, as I was never interested anyways. But what I’m concerned about is if I will have enough time to complete homework outside of class. What I’ve heard about the two schools that I’d applied to is that they’re fairlu competitive, and the atmosphere and mood there is hardly like it is at my middle school. The students there actually WANT to learn, unlike the students at my school, or even the high school I’m zoned in for. So obviously, the students there are a lot more motivated, and somewhat smarter, as shown by their staggering SAT average of 1490 and 1455 in oppose to my local high school, with an average of 954. Anyways, this post is dragging on too long, so I’ll get right to the point. I have recently confirmed the courses I will be taking next year, which is…

  • AP Computer Science Principles
  • Honors Math Analysis
  • Honors English 9
  • Honors World History II
  • Honors Biology
  • Spanish II
  • AP Environmental Science

So with my schedule being consist of a 1 hour and 15 minute bus drive (2 hour and 30 minutes round trip), baseball practice during Spring for 2 hours every day after school hours, and a very “complicated” mom, will I have enough time to manage all of the possible workload? Also, are the classes I will be taking in the near future time consuming/challenging?

2

Hi! I’m also a fellow 8th grader, and although I’m not in high school yet I do have a thing or two to say about time management.
Worst Case Scenario (I’m assuming your high school start and end time is the same as mine): Waking up pretty early (in the 5:00-5:30 range due to your long commute), so you have to sleep early in order to maintain health. School lasts until about 2:15-2:45 with an additional 2-3 hrs of extracurriculars and 1-1.5 hr transportation. so the first half of you day in which you cannot really complete homework goes up until around 7. At our high school, we can expect 30-45 minutes or homework per honors or AP class, and 15-30 minutes for CP (normal level). So worst case scenario is having 5 hr 15 min of homework. If you eat dinner while doing it, and shower in the morning, then you can expect to be able to finish all of your homework by around midnight.

That is terrible, and it’s sacrificing family time, relaxation, and is sure to lead to long term issues relating to sleep deprivation, stress, and such.

You mentioned a super long drive. If you have a lot of homework you should complete homework on the bus. If this is not possible due to route changes (if you are using public transportation) then try and sleep during that time (although may not be possible because you’re being constantly awoken?)

Try using the Pomodoro technique, it really saved me a lot of time. You don’t need to buy the books and timers, you can just search how to do it and find a free online or mobile timer. During the long breaks you should exercise or grab a snack. During short breaks you can check your phone and whatnot.

Set a priority list and get them done in that order, or make a schedule for yourself to follow.

Download ColdTurkey or equivalent and block distracting websites.

If you enjoy listening to music while working, make a YouTube or Spotify playlist that can run smoothly without you constant switching songs. If you like your workplace completely silent, make sure it stays that way.

In between transitions in class, or during study hall, make sure to complete homework and don’t goof off.

Some things you definitely want to do regardless of any situation:

  • record your homework somewhere (so you know what you need to do)
  • have an organized homework completion area with all the necessary supplies (pencils, erasers, paper, flat surface, etc.)

As regards for the difficulty of the classes, AP Enviro is considered an AP lite and I don’t know about AP Comp Pri. Since it’s a magnet school I’d expect it to be pretty intense, so be prepared to engage in time management techniques.

Above all, however, you should maintain your health, eat healthy food, don’t skip meals, try to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, and don’t slack off in both your extracurriculars and school.

3

Thanks for the advice! I’ll try my best to do well in high school, but I guess I can now be certain that my current routine of “wake up, eat, go to school, play baseball, go home, eat, shower, play video games, and go to bed” won’t cut it. It’ll definitely take some time and effort on my part to get used to the change. I guess it won’t be as easy to impress my mom with straight A’s :frowning:

4

I know you are new to College Confidential so I’ll give you a few tips on this website: posting on a post makes it go to the top of the list of posts, so don’t repost, just bump your post (by posting in your post). Wow that sentence had a lot of “post”. Anyway, to make a comment appear in the notifications of another person, do @theperson’sname to link them in.

I’m pretty sure you won’t have five hours of homework everyday, that’s only if your teachers all gang up on you or you procrastinate on big projects. The workload however, varies widely between teachers. For example my history teacher only gives one assignment every month, while my science teacher gives out daily assignments to complete.

If you are a diligent student I’m sure you can maintain your straight As, and remember that communication with teachers, project partners, parents, etc. is key.