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Thank you for purchasing the fifth edition
of our booklet, How to Succeed in High School. Short and
sweet, this little booklet tells you all the essential things
to know if you want to do well in your high school classes.
For those of you taking Advanced Placement classes, remember
that we also sell study guides to help manage your life before
the test. Also, we carry the following helpful titles:
How to Do Homework, Research Made Easy, and How to Get Into College.
Contents:
I. What Precisely Does it Mean to Succeed in
High School?
II. What is Important?
III. Homework.
IV. Tests.
V. Final Note.
I. What Precisely Does it Mean to Succeed in High School?
Before we explain
how you can go about succeeding in high school, it is necessary
to first know what that means. The dictionary definition
of succeed is "to do well; to accomplish what is attempted
or intended." What you should be attempting to accomplish
depends on what is important.
I. What is Important?
The questions of "what is important?"
and "what should I be accomplishing?" go hand in hand.
You must first know what is important to decide what it is you
are aiming to accomplish. There are all sorts of answers
to these questions, but we feel that ours are the clearest and
most helpful.
First, your GPA and class rank are of prime
importance. You should intend to be in the top twenty percent
of your class. If it is at all possible, you should set
your sights higher. The top ten percent of your class is
your ideal goal, but if you are in the top twenty percent, you
can consider that success. Bearing this in mind, you should
take classes that will help your class rank- you may be a musician,
but if your school weights classes, do not take a low-weighted
band class. Take as many Honors and AP courses as possible.
Remember to check your class rank and GPA often; ask your friends
for theirs. Your friends' GPA can give you an accurate
idea of what your minimum goal should be. However, remember
that you should try and outshine your friends.
Second, every single one of your classes is
the most important class you will ever take. Each and every
class should be first priority on your list, and you should try
for straight 'A's in every one. This may seem hard, but
the solution is to make school your only priority. Sleep,
breakfast, a social life, your health and even bathing should
come second to doing well in school. Such things can be
squeezed in the cracks, when you have the time. Any student
who yields to the voices of foolish doctors or parents and tries
to get nine hours of sleep a night has little chance of success.
It is the student who stays up until midnight and gets up at
five that is the valedictorian. Placing sleep as a low
priority will help if you participate in extracurricular activities.
You should also go to school every day, as missing even one of
your classes will through you weeks behind. Your health
may be important, but your success in high school is of greater
importance. Staying home sick is for middle school years.
Third, extracurricular activities should be
high on your priority list. Each and every club, sport,
or music group you belong to demands loyalty and effort.
You must be able to fiddle with your schedule until all of these
are satisfied Family plans, friendships, and all other
activities must be second to your rehearsals, matches and meetings.
Join as many as you can and keep up your grades, these are the
sort of thing that colleges look for. You should read more
about that in our fine booklet, How to Get Into College.
While you are remembering all of these things,
it is still important to keep life in perspective. Everything
you do now is simply the beginning of a much longer career.
Much of what you learn will not be important in your later life,
though it is now. This could lead you to think that a single
homework assignment or test does not matter much down the road,
but remember that several homework assignments or tests can determine
your grade, which of course determines your GPA and class rank.
Your GPA and class rank determine what sort of college you go
to, which determines how well you do in life. Every time
you dismiss an assignment as unimportant you let yourself down,
hurting your success. Do not let yourself down. Still,
do not get stressed over any single test or assignment, as much
of it will not really matter in ten years.
III. Homework.
Homework is paramount to success in high school.
Actually doing your homework can greatly influence your grade,
and homework may even help reinforce what you have learned.
Homework should be your first priority when at home.
Depending on how much homework you have and
how many activities you are in, you could have to get as little
as four hours of sleep a night to get all of your homework done.
Do not worry, many students have survived with as little as three
hours a night and succeeded. This does not mean that you
work slowly, nor does it mean you are overloaded. Your teachers
merely expect, as they should, that you keep up a workload that
will prepare you for college.
Prioritize your homework. Your time
may be limited and anything you plan to do last could suffer
if you find you must sleep. First do anything you know
will be collected, especially if it is long or needs to be typed.
Homework which is not busy work can come before busy work, but
do them both. Follow this by reading anything you will
need to prepare you for tests and quizzes the next day.
Next should come anything not being collected. Finally,
if you have time and energy left, work on any long term projects.
These should be given first priority only on the night before
they are due. If you find that you have not finished all
of your homework and actually need to sleep, there is something
you can do. You should finish as much homework as possible
before your weak body makes you sleep and then set your alarm
much earlier than necessary. This way you can do homework
in the morning, before leaving for school.
If it seems to you that you have too much
homework, think again. In college you will probably have
more, and more demanding professors. When your teachers
tell you that you have it easy they are right. After all,
you go to school about thirty-five hours a week and have about
twenty hours of work. In college your classes will not
meet every day, nor will you have as many classes each day. This
amounts to much less time spent in class. On the other
hand, for every hour of class you will have two hours of work.
IV. Tests
Doing well on tests is, of course, key to
succeeding in high school. You may have heard many suggestions
as to how to do well on a test, but here we have those which
will really help.
Many teachers and sources tell you to start studying well
in advance of the test. This may help, but studying is
one of the things that fits in not long before long-term projects
in your homework schedule. As helpful as it is, studying
early is not necessary. A well-done study program for two
nights before the test can help, as long as it is first priority
and you do not count on getting ridiculous extra sleep.
There are so many different ways to study
depending on the class that we will not go into all of them now.
For a detailed guide on how to study for a test, consult our
How To Study for Tests booklet, or one of our study guides for
that class..
Now, we discuss finals and other landmark
tests. Your finals are definitely not something to get
stressed about. Some may be harder than others, and you
should worry about those given by your most challenging teachers;
remember, however, that stressing over your final will not help
your grade. You should study and plan to do well on all
of your finals. However, finals do not necessarily measure
how well you know the course. You are the only judge of
that.
Then there are tests like the SATs, PSATs,
SAT-IIs and AP tests. These are definitely worth stressing
over. During the time you are preparing for them, they
should be high on your priority list, unlike most things you
will study over a long period of time. If your school offers
an SAT prep course, take it. Bend your schedule to include
it. Study as much as possible for these tests, and take
as many as possible. As with class rank, pay attention
to your friends' scores- you should be at least as good as them.
For more on how important these tests are, read our What Tests
to Take, and How to Get into College. Help studying can
be found in our guides to doing well on each test.
IV. Final Notes.
Besides doing your homework and studying,
there are two final keys to success in high school: organization
and attitude. If you believe you can get straight 'A's,
you will do so as long as you keep organized, pay constant attention
to your grades, and follow our tips. Remember always that
since success is who you beat, other people's grades matter too.
As Gore Vidal once said, "It is not enough to succeed, others
must fail."
For more information on how to succeed in high school,
check out our list of appropriate titles.
And that is the satire of Penny.
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think!!!!
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