Deciding on our classes and rigor for the school year can prove to be an impactful decision that shapes our day-to-day life during high school. It is important to be as educated as possible on the different potential options presented so that you can make the best decision that supports you as an individual. There are many things to be considered based on your ideal personal preferences including workload, difficulty and potential success.
Amount of homework. As a student, it is inevitable that some nights are going to be composed solely with homework. However, it should be limited as much as possible. It is important to balance out your sports, clubs, homework and more so that success and happiness can be found in different areas. Knowing yourself and the amount of workload possible for you to succeed in these multiple areas should certainly be taken into account when picking classes.
Difficulty of concepts. Everyone has individual strengths and weaknesses that need to be fueled and supported in your classes. Knowing what you’re good at and what needs work, along with which skills will be useful in each class, should be considered in choosing courses. For example, a higher-level math course may be less challenging for a classmate than for you.
Success. Each class has different ways to succeed and each person has a different definition of success. Understanding what you would like to take out of this course, whether it’s grade-wise or education, is important. Along with that, knowing people’s grades who took a certain course in the past and advice they would give to students currently taking the same course are factors that should impact choices.
I encourage you to reach out to people who are taking or have taken a class you are interested in and to talk to the teacher of that class to gather this information. After talking to a few students myself, I repeatedly heard that the hardest classes based on homework, grades and difficulty were AP U.S History and Honors Physics. That doesn’t mean you should avoid these classes but realize what you’re getting yourself into first.
After talking to past AP U.S History students, a common theme in their struggles was the abundance of homework and the necessity of memorization. Conversely, Physics doesn’t have nearly as much homework or memorization, but the concepts were said to be confusing and difficult to understand, containing difficult math and science. These are just the negatives of those classes which are comprised of a lot more than just what was mentioned.
There are many other difficult classes, and these examples might seem easy to some, but if you are nervous or don’t know what you should take, your answers could only be an email away.
