The jump from middle school to high school is huge. Honestly, I felt like the workload of each class had doubled, and I struggled to keep up with the pace in freshman year. But as a current upperclassman, I’m proud to say that I’m now a straight-A student! If you, like me, want to learn how to keep up with it all in high school, here are some tips and tricks that helped me become my best academic self over the years–with advice sorted by every core class!

⋆˙ English ⋆˙

I’m going to split this one into two sections: reading and writing.

Reading

I swear: reading used to be the one skill that I struggled the most with. Those multiple-choice, cold-read tests would instantly tank my English grade. If I do say so myself, however, I’ve gotten a lot better at the skill–and the one thing that helped me the most was Khan Academy’s Reading and Writing SAT prep lessons.

The 11 unit course is like a crash-course to English class. Each unit has 4 lessons (besides the last one, which has 8 lessons) and at least one multiple choice practice test. You’ll learn about basically all the close reading (and writing!) skills you need to succeed in English class. On top of that, it’s completely free to use–and by completing the lessons, you’re not only improving your English skills–you’re also studying for the SAT itself! It’s a win-win!

Another tip: read slowly. I once got an 11/15 on a reading check (ouch!), and the number one piece of advice my English teacher at the time gave me was to read slowly. It’s so easy to read too fast: your eyes skip over lines, and the blocks of words start to blur together. But when that happens, you risk missing out on key details and ideas. 

But how, exactly, do you read slowly? Personally, I’ve found that reading aloud helps me the most. Not, like, literally saying the words out loud, but just mouthing all the words to myself–whispering the words to myself. It truly keeps you on pace, and it ensures that you don’t skip any words or lines. I’m not as scared of reading checks as I used to be now!

Writing

Interestingly enough, while I struggled with close-reading, I somehow did quite well with writing. I don’t know how that works, but I do know what helped me succeed: brainstorming.

With writing, it’s sometimes so easy to get caught up with the language that you neglect the strength of your arguments. You spend so much time trying to express what you want to say in the most flowery, artistic language possible that you don’t spend enough time making sure what you’re saying is actually any good. Brainstorming, however, can help prevent that. Before I write anything–even if it’s a timed write where I don’t have a whole lot of time–I always do a prewrite, where I map out my arguments, gather my evidence, and construct my lines of reasoning. That way, when I write, I know exactly what I’m saying–and suddenly, exactly how I’m going to say it just kind of falls into place. Once you know what you’re trying to say, the right language, the right words, naturally come to you.

Writing really isn’t about fancy language and complicated words. It’s about communication. It is the expression and exchange of ideas from one human being to another. If your words can’t effectively communicate your ideas to someone else, it doesn’t matter how pretty they are.

⋆˙ History ⋆˙

In sophomore year, I took AP U.S History (APUSH for short). That class was slightly torturous. Yes, I learned a lot from it, but there were so many events, so many people and places to memorize and understand–just completing the textbook readings every day was a lot of work.

I think what helped me stay on top of that class the most, however, was making good timelines. I would just get a blank sheet of paper, draw a few big long lines over it with a ruler, and start marking the events we were learning about on there in chronological order. That really gave me a bird’s-eye view of what was going on in the time period we were studying. And once I had that basic understanding, I would challenge myself to explain how each event on the timeline led to the next event on the timeline. That way, I’d not only understand what was going on–I’d also understand the causes and effects of each event. I feel that timelines truly solidify my history understanding!

⋆˙ Math ⋆˙

I’ll be completely honest here–math has always been my least favorite subject. I just feel like a complete robot doing it. There’s no art, no argument to make with math equations. There’s only one right answer–either you get it right, or you don’t. You churn out right answers like some perfect computer algorithm.

Math is just pure logic. In my opinion, then, the best way to master it is just pure practice. Be sure to do your homework–even the ungraded ones–regularly. Instead of jamming all your studying into one night, practice solving the equations over many more nights. Yes, that’s a piece of advice that could technically apply to every subject…but I think it’s especially relevant for math. You don’t become a perfect number-churner overnight. You master the algorithm gradually.

⋆˙ Science ⋆˙

I think this section needs to be split into two parts: the memorization-based sciences and the conceptual sciences.

Memorization-based sciences (Biology):

Okay, maybe my opinion needs to be taken with a grain of salt–I’ve only ever taken one biology course in high school. Maybe my opinion would be different if I’ve also taken a harder biology course too, such as AP Bio. But honestly–I felt like biology was literally just memorization. You learn a bunch of vocab, a bunch of systems and how they work, and on the test, all you have to do is regurgitate all those facts to get the points. There is no application. There is no deeper thinking, no deeper brain-searching than your short-term memory bank.

That’s not to say biology is easy, though. Those systems and diagrams are really complicated, and there’s so many elements working together to make them work, which makes studying them both fascinating and difficult. But for memorization-based courses, I think these strategies work the best:

Creating flashcards: I feel like this is sometimes looked down upon as some elementary-school level strategy, but honestly, I feel like it doesn’t deserve the shade. It forces active recall and is really useful for vocabulary-based tests.

A tip on creating flashcards: I used to create physical flashcards, out of index cards and everything. While I do think the act of physically writing down the terms and their definitions could help you remember them better, it’s unfortunately just…really time consuming (and really paper-consuming too!). That’s why I think making flashcards digitally with platforms like Quizlet makes more sense. There’s also a feature on Quizlet where you can upload a set of terms and their definitions into their system and they’ll automatically create your flashcards for you! A much more opportunity-cost friendly choice!

Blurts: *pure regurgitation!* No, seriously though…these are still really helpful. How these work is that you take a blank sheet of paper, close/put away all your resources (notes, textbooks, etc.), and literally write down every single thing you remember about the stuff you need to remember on the paper. Once you’re done with your blurt, you can open up your notes again and see if you missed anything. These are really useful for seeing holes in your memorization: they directly point out to you what you don’t remember!

Conceptual sciences (Chemistry and Physics):

These are so hard. These are like English and Math coming together to mess with you as one: with conceptual sciences, not only do you have to truly understand what’s going on, which is a bit like the argumentative stuff in English, but you also have to be able to execute the equations accurately, just like math.

These have historically been…my worst class 😦 . But they’re also the most interesting class for me: doing labs can be really fun, and I honestly think I do the most learning in these classes. What’s helped me most with these classes, though, is something called the Feynman technique.

Basically, the Feynman technique is where you teach the concepts you need to study to someone else, like a sibling or friend. But honestly, getting someone else to sit there and listen to me blunder through chemistry concepts isn’t really feasible…so what I’ll do most of the time is shut myself in my room, make sure I’m not bothering anyone, and just start explaining the concepts to my wall, acting like my wall is the kid I need to teach these concepts to.

It really helps you see the gaps in your understanding: if you can’t explain it well, you probably don’t understand it well enough to take a test on it…and you probably have to study them more. It also really helps with the argumentative side of these courses, as explaining the concepts to yourself is like a practice-run of explaining all the arguments you might have to make on the tests!

⋆˙ World Language ⋆˙

An open letter to whoever created the lovely language of Spanish (the foreign language I take):

Dear mighty creator,

Why are there so many possible conjugations for every single verb????????

Seriously though, guys. I take Spanish, so unfortunately, I don’t know much about how other foreign languages work…but for Spanish, each change in subject, each slight tweak in tense, totally rearranges the verb into some new conjugated form. And then—there’s three different types of verbs (–ar, –er, and –ir verbs), so there’s three different patterns on how these verbs transform into their conjugated forms. And on top of that–there’s a long, long list of irregulars–verbs that don’t follow those patterns when those patterns were already complicated enough to understand!!

Sorry to native speakers of Spanish. Sorry to the Spanish community. But seriously–did this mighty creator person just create all these conjugations just to frustrate and spite all the foreigners trying to learn their language?? ;-;

Anyway. What helped me the most in memorizing all these conjugations was a site called Conjuguemos. It is such a savior. On the site, which is free to use, you can select a verb tense you want to study. It’ll then give you a timed quiz on that tense, where it will give you an infinitive form of a verb and ask you to conjugate that verb into the verb tense you selected to study. You can choose to just get regular verbs or to get regulars along with irregulars, to fully test your understanding of the tense.

I really like it–it’s super helpful. (I do have to admit–the frog guy that’s their logo is a bit creepy, though.)

I also think something else might help: listening to songs in the foreign language you’re studying. This advice might be a bit unorthodox, but I think it’s helped me better understand Spanish culture and improve my accent. My favorite Spanish singer is Alvaro Soler! It’s also just fun to get into the pop culture of another language. You may not understand a whole lot, but it’s fun to learn more about other cultures!

⋆˙ That’s all I had! ⋆˙

What did you guys think? Did I miss something? Should I clarify something? Comment down below!

⋆˙ eighteen rants ⋆˙

**disclaimer: I have not been sponsored by any of the sites or resources I recommended in this blog post–I use them myself and recommended them completely out of my own desire!