By Alizabeth Meadows
A new semester can feel like a brand-new start. There are no previous grades, no previous stressing, it is a clean slate. There are new people to meet, new opportunities to learn, and better yet, a start to figuring out what to improve that way your semester is less stressful than last semester.
For me, last semester I ended up getting sick for a week and got behind in my classes. I had been unable to completely catch up and, as a result, was always stressed out. This semester, I was determined to do better, to create a better strategy for managing my time. I started trying to look at what was possibly keeping me behind. I thought it was the way I did my subjects. In 8th grade, I found that it was easier to do a subject a day, for each day I had a live lesson. I only had five classes, and it made it quite easy to stay caught up. I thought that maybe, this semester would be the same, even though I now have six classes.
I soon realized that, no, it didn’t work in that way. I wasn’t able to complete the sixth class and fell very behind in all of my classes. I decided to try to go back to doing all my subjects every day this semester, to see if I could stay caught up better. I decided to do a test. One week I would do one subject per day while the next week I’d do all subjects in a day. In the first week, where I did one subject per day, I hadn’t been able to complete my sixth class due to having extra work in Algebra Honors, with a project. In the second week, since I work six hours a day, I do a subject per hour. I found that I had been able to complete all that week’s work and I was actually able to go back and complete some of my missing work!
From now on, I will use that method, remembering that I am no longer in middle school and that there will be more work, and I have to find new ways to complete my work that way I don’t fail. Remember, it’s not easy to jump in right away and find out what’s wrong. It took me a whole semester of stress and frustration to discover what I was doing wrong. It takes time, and remember to breathe, not get too frustrated. Ask you LSC or teacher for any methods you can change in order for more work to be completed and for less stress.
I wish you luck in finding your improvement!
-Alizabeth M.
