The change to high school is one of the hardest for most people. As the incoming freshman class enters with high expectations, resources, such as the iPads, are here to help us all succeed. Despite these advancements, the challenges of high school work still exist. Here are a few of my top tips and tricks to get ahead of the stress of high school.

1. The most known, yet hardest to practice, tip is to relax. If you allow homework and tests to stress you too much, then it will become increasingly difficult to succeed. The best way to relax is to take a break from school every day when you get home. Don’t rush right into homework, but rather eat a snack, play a game, or talk to family or friends about your day.
2. Find a power song. During finals, the hardest thing to overcome is to keep wanting to study after days and days of reviewing the same information. When you start to get tired, a power song is a must. This past year, mine was, “High Hopes” by the band Kodaline, although this varies by person. I played this song every time I lost energy to study and, despite that feeling, this song always got me ready for another round of finals studying.
3. Change your study subject. The human brain can only completely focus on a single subject for 20 minutes. Anything beyond that time you can not fully retain. My plan would be this: if you have a lot of math homework start with it, but every few problems work on homework from another class. This will insure that you can fully retain all the information you work on.
4. Don’t abuse the iPads. My freshman year, I had every popular game on my iPad, and as a result my grades suffered. Now I like to have one or two games that I can play with my friends during lunch, providing myself another good time to relax a little.
5. Lastly, get some sleep. It can be extremely hard to get any quality sleep when you are at practice until 5:30 p.m., have two tests, and a project due the next day. Sleep, according to National Institutes of Health, helps with memory and learning due to the increase in overall brain function. Both of these benefits are increasingly important in today’s academic world. Try to get a few hours in, even when you are swamped with test and projects.

If you work on these few things this year, then high school should be a less stressful and more enjoyable experience. High school, and the giant seniors, aren’t nearly as scary as the movies make them out to be. Enjoy the next four years, and I would like to be the first to welcome all freshmen to Glenbard West.