The end of summer is approaching and it’s time for the next grade at AFHHS, and you’re curious to know what to expect in the near future. The workload is new, the layout is new, and the teachers are somewhat new. You get acclimated to the social climate and start learning and internalizing your studies. Now, as a school, we are all on the cusp of a new year, and new challenges await us. These are some tips to raise up into the next grade smoothly.

Tip 1: Be calm
Being calm is central to doing well in school. If you are not calm while you’re at school, you are more likely to be agitated, start fights, and not do your work. You might blow up on a teacher for what is seemingly a little thing from their eyes but may seem like a big deal to you because you’re not in the right state of mind. Because of this, being calm is the best thing you can be while at school.

Tip 2: Being organized

I sometimes struggle with this myself, but another key facet of being a student here is being organized. By being organized, you can find your work easier and you’ll be able to pay more attention in class rather than scrambling around for supplies or that notebook that you missed in your locker or that one very key piece of paper that was needed for the next class.

Tip 3: Communication

Communication is vital in high school. Learning how to communicate with those who are at your level and that are above your level -peers and teachers- you allow yourself to refine a set of skills that will be very useful later in life. Communication is a seemingly basic skill but if you don’t learn how to communicate then you aren’t able to get the tools that you need in order to learn, among other things.

Tip 4: Work ethic

Work ethic is a very important skill in high school to learn. It is hard to simply sit down and crank out a 500-word essay within the span of an hour without practice or without the will to go on. Work ethic is both of those; your consolidated effort at staying constantly focused on one task for x amount of time. By building this foundational skill you can work longer, you can work harder, and you can work faster than before, and who doesn’t want to spend less time on an assignment?

Tip 5: Staying Focused

Staying focused will allow you to better understand the content being taught in school and it will also allow you to better do the work at school, and by proxy, at home. I’m sure that at some point in time you have gotten a demerit for talking or for being off task or for doing whatever else the teacher was not saying you should do. To avoid this, use the time outside of class to do what you need to do before getting back on track in class. Use your time wisely. You only have so many hours in a day to do things.

Tip 6: Be Kind

Maybe you had a bad day and you’re feeling miffed right now. You have the option to take out that anger on something constructive like a hobby or something like that or you have the option to let it sit and stew and bubble and boil and do all sorts of nasty things to your mind, causing more problems down the line and making your day worse. Now say someone walked by and said “Hey, how you doing? How was your day today?” You speak what’s on your mind and afterwards you feel like a weight has been lifted off your chest. This is the value of kindness. You can make somebody’s day just by simply acknowledging they exist and that they have problems. It’s just that simple. If you do this to the people that you meet then you will gain a good reputation around school for being kind or considerate or some other adjective. You can use this reputation to benefit yourself such as getting the benefit of the doubt in a bad situation, or getting more sympathy from a teacher when it’s the end of the quarter and your grades are lacking. Kindness can bring you far in life. Some people I know I’ve gotten jobs in interviews because of it. Even a ‘how you doin’’ will suffice, no constructive conversation needed.

These tips may not be something that you always follow or that you embody to a T, but I hope that you will use them to a sufficient degree to help yourself and help others in high school.