There is an art to surviving your high school career.  There are a few key points in skill of enjoying your high school life. These things people often look over and don’t consider as much as they should.

Choosing the right class is essential to enjoying yourself in your high school life. Choose the wrong class and your whole year could take a turn for the worst. Of course you have to take the required classes to pass high school but there are filler classes that you don’t need to take. These are where you have to take careful consideration. Things that you may want to consider is: who teaches the class, how long are you taking the class, what is the homework in there like, and is the class going to be challenging. I made the mistake of choosing a class I was not prepared for and I ended up having to drop out. A way to help make choices is to be friends with current high schoolers and figure out who the favorite teachers are and who to avoid. Certain teachers may have a horrible teaching method or a bad attitude. Others may assign homework every night or don’t accept late work. Knowing the students is knowing the teachers.

One way to make such friends is to do something after school, like an extra-curricular activities. Do something that you like and if you can drag your friends in with you. Obvious ideas would be things like: Chess club, Drama, Band, Choir, etc. However, you don’t have to stick to something like this if your school offers different opportunities. I have been a part of a few interesting clubs like: Bee club, Aquaponics, Adventure club, and Theater tech. If none of these things catch your eye, then make up your own club. Grab a group of friends and form a club of your own and ask a teacher to supervise it. The point is to have something that can occupy your time after school and an environment where you can meet knew people and form new friends.

Lastly people think high school is this awful hell hole that no one likes. The best way to enjoy it is to go into it without any expectations whatsoever. This might be the easiest to understand but the hardest to put into practice. Many people have fears as they enter high school that are either wrong or not as bad as they might think. One of the main things the I have heard is that people are scared of upperclassmen. The idea that the upperclassmen haze the freshmen is a superstition. I have never actually heard of this happening in any of the schools that I or my friends have gone to. This is not to say that bullies are a myth but the hazing isn’t true.

Even though I have said these things that could be bad for your four years, high school is fun for me. I have screwed up in the past in my high school career, everyone does all the time. For example, in first semester in junior year, I decided that I wanted to be in AP chemistry. It was okay at first, but then I decided that I wanted to do Theater Tech. Theater cut into my free time a lot. There were weeks where I would end school at 3:15 and not be home until 10PM. This lead to me being behind on homework and being tired in class. My AP chem class suffered the worst of it and I had to drop the class because I had an F. However, even though I went through a whole semester of that, I would never say that I haven’t enjoyed high school as a whole. No one goes through all of highschool without having bad experiences because of it, but you can try to prevent some of them through simple choices. Pick the right classes for you, find a good group of friends, and good luck.