As a senior of the school, I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with the ups and downs of high school. It can suck real bad, I know firsthand. But I feel as though it’d be less sucky if someone had given me these pieces of advice back then before I became a senior. So here are a few tips from me to the future seniors on how to make your high school senior life easier.
1. Choose your subjects wisely.
I cannot stress enough how important this is. It’s so important, really.. I really, really can’t stress this enough. When you get to Year 10, choosing your senior subjects may be a bit daunting and you might end up choosing whatever random subjects in the moment and then dealing with the consequences in the future. Do not do this. Put thought into your future subjects. Choosing the right subjects for you is extremely important as it can impact your senior schoolwork immensely.
If you’re not sure what subjects to choose because you have a spare line to fill, always think about your future school life. Choosing heavy content filler subjects for said lines is going to make your senior life 100 times harder than it needs to be especially if you’re only going to half-ass the subject or if you’re not interested in it. Think twice before choosing subjects like biology, legal, modern history, physics and chemistry because they all require a lot of work which you may not be prepared for if they’re only serving as filler subjects.
If you don’t need such heavy-content subjects, or if you’re not that interested in them in the first place, I’d recommend that you stay away from them unless you actually need them or are very passionate about them. This will save you a LOT of grief in the future, trust me. You’ll thank yourself for it.
2. Make good study habits early on.
Making good study habits early on is actually pretty important for senior school life. I didn’t realise how important my study habits would be either. I’d recommend you start making good study habits right now as a junior so that it’ll stick with you in the future.
I know that cramming for an exam and starting/finishing a task the night before may work for some of you, myself included, but this does not and will not work for prelims, trials or the HSC. You will literally be reviewing everything you’ve learnt since Senior School Day #1, and you cannot slack off and BS your way through it. Studying as early as possible for these exams is what you should be doing, as well as going over past study notes, exams and tasks to help you improve on anything you may be lacking in. This also leads into the next tip.
3. Always keep your past study notes, exams and tasks.
This point is something that I should have been doing since day 1. Unfortunately for me, I’ve lost and misplaced quite a lot of the study material I should be using to help me improve and study. Keeping a binder or folder for past papers and task results is a good way of documenting your good marks and strengths as well as the things that you should work on. These also serve as a base for studying and can help you revise things you either forgot about or didn’t know how to do. You may accumulate a lot of papers in this folder but in retrospect, you’ll be glad you did so. These past papers and tasks will help you a lot in the long run.
4. Have a healthy balance between schoolwork and your social life.
Okay, this one is probably pretty obvious but having a good balance between your schoolwork and social life is crucial in maintaining your mental health and sanity. Spending too much time working on schoolwork will tire and stress you out, and can even lead to burn out, yet spending too much time on social life will damage your work ethic and study habits, which will lead to declining grades and schoolwork quality. Make sure you don’t let either of them sway you too far, and always be aware of both your schoolwork and social life. By having a healthy balance between the two, your mental state won’t deteriorate and you won’t be going crazy or overly stressed out in school.
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Those are the four main points that I wish someone had actually gone through with me and explained to me in-depth. I encourage you to keep these in mind while on your path to becoming a senior student and role model of the school. Good luck! <3
– anonymous <3
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