As the end of the school year approaches, students reflect on their experiences, whether positive or negative. Some relate to how classes can be difficult due to assignments and testing, especially maintaining grades.
“I feel like it is kind of harder than last year. The workload is more and stuff like that, but I don’t know, I feel like I do like this year better, but the workload is more,” sophomore Victoria Lara said.
As students advance further in their high school journey, classes become more challenging. For sophomore Lauren Fajardo, she has mixed feelings about her school experience.
“I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes, it could be fun, but sometimes it could be very tiring because your work that’s due, sometimes your grade would be bad, and then the next day would be good again,” Fajardo said.
She finds school can be different at times, keeping up with assignments and maintaining a high grade. The classes she believes are most stressful to her are chemistry and English.
“English to me is really stressful by writing FRQs, and how you really have to understand text. For chem, it’s just a lot of math, and I’m really terrible at math, so I tend to have a hard time understanding what we’re doing sometimes,” Fajardo said.
Classwork can be stressful at times, taking breaks can help cleanse the mind. This past spring break helped students relieve their stress.
“I think state testing would be like, the most stressful because on top of that, we still had to do some work a little bit, but it was still stressful to be in classes for that one taking test. And I think all of the unit tests are really hard too, especially in US history,” junior Feather White said.
Studying for tests in advance prevents students from being underprepared.
According to Harvard Summer School, a website providing information on academic programs, there is a list of tips for test taking such as good study habits, meaning understanding and retaining information instead of cramming, as well as sleeping earlier.
These are helpful ways to reduce stress and remain prepared. Not to mention, getting enough sleep is essential for performance. For White, a moment from this school year she would redo is the time she goes to bed.
“I think that I should study more for tests and go to sleep on time, because it did affect my grades. So yes, I will redo that,” White said.
As for Duran, a moment she would redo is first semester as it made an impact on her grade.
“I just let my like, let my grades drop. I would do that. Like, I don’t know. I just let stuff get to me, and I just stopped doing my work. I would want to redo that,” junior Jaelene Duran said.
It is important to keep up with assignments in order to not fall behind on classes and have to catch up on everything.
“It’s really stressful because it’s like, you really have to lock in for your senior year, and you’re taking testing, a lot of testing. For the state test, you have to do junior year, so stressful. And a lot of work, just a lot of work in general. But the school is peaceful,” White said.
Finding the right balance between school and life outside of it helps in many ways, such as keeping grades up and spending time with family and friends. Overall, students have mixed feelings about school, which can be fun yet demotivating and stressful.
