At the beginning of my high school senior year, I decided to enroll in the most difficult
Advanced Placement courses my school offered, including courses that more than half my class chose not to take, such as AP Chemistry. In addition to that, I have enrolled in two additional self-study courses related to psychology & politics.
You can very well guess that every day felt like another battle, but despite this, I managed to score well in my courses, including the self-studied courses. I was able to achieve this because I got committed to simple, logical fundamentals that I used to balance my very heavy course load. If applied, they can make you fully able to balance your courses and workload more independently. Here are 3 ways to balance your course load:
1. Quality over Quantity.
One reason I was able to achieve very well despite the course load is that I did not enroll in more courses and clubs than I thought I could handle: only enroll in a number of courses you know you can at least get a pass at, otherwise you would be wasting your time and your hope. You are not a weaker student or a weaker person, because you took fewer courses/clubs - it just means you are more self-aware and more willing to succeed. If you have already chosen your courses and can't back now, then the two other fundamentals are more important for you!
2. Divide & Conquer.
One way to organize and balance your workload is to divide each subject/course based on its given importance. You should know exactly what you want from each course and whether or not a certain course is more important to you than the other. For example, my AP Calculus course was more important for my college credit than AP Psychology - so I gave more time to studying AP Calculus. Although it may be hard to sacrifice time from a course that you personally like, over a course that is important, you become a better student and a better person when you are able to prioritize (it was very difficult for me not to study my politics course in order to study chemistry, but I studied chemistry anyway!).
It may seem like a very simple given fundamentals, but balancing your courses means
that you divide the workload and finish each of them to get a good grade on all your courses, and so a part of balancing your courses is prioritizing them based on short-term or long-term importance.
The previous example was an example of long-term prioritizing. An example of short-term
Prioritizing is when you have a given assignment due tomorrow for course A and another
similar assignment due in three days for course B. Which assignment do you do? Of course, A, as it is due tomorrow. This requires putting some trust in your school and teachers,
as they also have a stake in determining what course is more important to finish.
Again, this is what balancing is all about. Always be aware of what you want and
what is more important than the other.
3. Schedules, Schedules, Schedules.
The importance of scheduling, not just in balancing course load, cannot be overstated. They are quite literally your most powerful tool to organize and thus balance. You are faced with multiple assignments and work from different courses, the only logical approach is to schedule all the work as you see fit, and then work on each of them by your given time.
Imagine that you have three assignments due tomorrow for three different courses, course A, course B, and course C, and you have eight hours of your day to complete them. First things first, grab a pencil and a small notebook and write exactly which ones you feel like doing first (try to pick the course that you do not enjoy very much at first to finish, and then the more well-liked courses to finish afterward).
Second, give each of the courses specific time frames to finish its given assignment, for example, course B is given from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm to finish. When you are
assigning timeframes for each course, make sure you give yourself considerable time to rest
and stay away from studying before getting back.
When you are done scheduling in that manner, you may end up with something looking like this: Course B is given from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. to finish, then a one-hour break. Course C is given from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. to finish, then a thirty-minute break. Course A is given from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. to finish.
In conclusion, successfully balancing a heavy course load requires a strategic approach. By prioritizing quality over quantity in your course/club selection, dividing your time, and implementing scheduling techniques, you can navigate challenging academic commitments easily. Remember that self-awareness and a well-organized plan are your allies in achieving academic success, even in the face of a demanding workload.
Hope this helped,
Malek
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