You asked, “How can I handle a busy school year filled with in and out of school activities without getting completely burnt out?”
The short answer is Time Management. The sooner that you master Time Management, the better your life will be for the rest of your life.
The slightly longer answer follows.
1. Budget your time for each task. Take no longer to do the task than your budget. The more that you do this, the better you will get at budgeting your time. Taking twice the time necessary to complete a task does not make it twice as good. For example, you need to wash your hands. You know that you can do a good job in 20–30 seconds, but you take 3 minutes. Your hands are no cleaner, and you have wasted your resources. Your most important resource is Time. You can’t buy more time; you can’t even be gifted more time. Wrap your brain around the fact that Time is your most precious commodity.
2. Look at each task that is before you and ask yourself, “Is this important?” If the answer is “No,” or you hesitate, then the answer is, “No!” Do not invest your time in things that are not important. Take care of important things before they become both urgent and important. Urgent things consume much more of your precious Time than things that are just important.
3. Avoid distractions and the people who cause them.
4. Get up early and study before class.This is what successful people do. Your brain is not cluttered early in the day, and you will retain the information better. Cramming at night does not work well. It is a waste of your Time.
5. Start a study group and discuss the information.
6. Entertainment is important, but avoid hours and hours of mindless dribble. The people who produce entertainment design it to hook you, suck you in, and keep you there. Don’t let them win. Shoot for a few hours of quality entertainment each week. Make entertainment something special in your life and not just a time-waster.
7. Wrap your brain around the fact that after you have gotten a healthy amount of sleep, which is important, you are awake for more than 100 hours each week. During a normal week, you are in school for about 40 hours, and some weeks much less. This means that you have 60-plus hours each week to invest
8. When you have a cluster of tasks before you, do the ones that are least desirable first. Save the ones that you like doing for last. This will help you move through the undesirable ones more quickly. Do them and be done with them. Then move on to the dessert. 9. Break up your study/homework time this way. Study until you feel your brain start to wander. Take a short, physical, productive break. You know, clean something, exercise, take a shower, walk the dog. Then return to your list of assignments. Repeat this process until you run out of things to do.
10. You know that there will be tests along the way. Start studying for the exams now. It is a fair question to ask your teachers, “Where do you get the questions for the exams?” You want to avoid something like studying the book only to learn that the exam questions come from the lecture notes.
11. Focus on mastering the content and meeting the deadlines rather than focusing on the grade. If you master the content and you meet the deadlines, your grades will take care of themselves.
There is another very important thing that you should be doing now, and schools do a very poor job of helping students do this. That is, now is the time to prepare for the next chapter. Most students graduate and then ask, “Now what?” Now is the time for you to be taking the classes that will support your goals beyond graduation. Now is the time for you to start making career investigations so that you get on the right path for you.
Very little is worse than investing your resources climbing the wrong educational ladder only to reach the top and learn that you are on the wrong ladder that’s leaning against the wrong wall.
When you are on the wrong ladder, you spend your resources on useless things. Then, when you learn what ladder is right for you, you don’t have the time and money that you need. Get on the right path for you, and the time to start doing that is now.
A student that seeks worthwhile and needed knowledge and skills has a much higher chance of getting large scholarships. In high school, you are on a full-ride scholarship. You are not going to school for free. The taxpayers are paying your tuition. The taxpayers will invest more than $100,000 in you to help you earn your diploma. If you do well in high school, you will have a much better chance of getting large to full-ride scholarships in college.
Many students wrongly believe that they will be successful later in life. They fail to understand that Success is a lifestyle. Success is not a destination. You can be successful right now. You can be a successful student, which sets you up to be more successful in the next chapter.
Above all else, you can do it, no matter what IT is.
Colonel Allen M. Morris is a retired schoolteacher who has answered students’ questions for decades; the Q&A above is just one of many that he has answered. You are welcome and encouraged to ask any school-related questions by writing to FromNewToKnew@Gmail.com. He has also worked with many different groups of students to research and write books on how to be better in school, relationships, and thus life. You can write to him at the same address to get your free copy of the book(s), or you can check out his channel at youtube.com/c/FromNewToKnew Colonel Allen M. Morris is a retired schoolteacher who has answered students’ questions for decades; the Q&A above is just one of many that he has answered. You are welcome and encouraged to ask any school-related questions by writing to FromNewToKnew@Gmail.com. He has also worked with many different groups of students to research and write books on how to be better in school, relationships, and thus life. You can write to him at the same address to get your free copy of the book(s), or you can check out his channel at youtube.com/c/FromNew-ToKnew