As the school year becomes more routine, students start gaining more control over their schedules and organization. But as the year goes on, the difficulty and amount of work increases as well, and it is this transition that leads students to become overwhelmed.  And while every year requires lots of work, each one is difficult for its own unique reasons.

Often, students, regardless of grade, work hard in a class because they enjoy seeing their hard work pay off through grades and other areas. However, maintaining good grades in challenging classes can be especially difficult.

For junior Fatima Zaidi, those challenging classes are AP Chemistry and Accelerated Algebra II.

“There is a large workload for both and I do learn a lot, but in the long run, I think I end up forgetting everything,” Zaidi said. “[Teachers] end up cramming everything in at one time and I feel like I’m learning from my tests, and by that point, we move on to the next subject and I just forget everything again.”

Classwork can become confusing, but teachers also rely on students to be responsible for their own work and grades in that subject, especially as the school year progresses. With the increasing number of assessments in the classroom and extracurricular activities outside the classroom, teachers understand that students become busy. Students are also expected to be able to manage their time and effort put into their schoolwork. Whether it be by coming after school to go over the material or finding tutorials online, there are multiple options to help students understand what is happening in class.

Many students care about their success in a class, and for most, it shows when their grades increase. But a majority of them are learning through trial and error, not through extra efforts outside of the class.

“It’s more the difficulty. When I’m in class, I feel like I get it but when I leave, I feel like I don’t,” Priya Hedge, an AP Calculus AB student said. “I just go through my notes and make sure I understand everything, but there’s definitely more I could be doing. Like I could be doing more practice problems, I just haven’t yet.”

Procrastination is a common issue among all students and can be resolved, but most people do not get around to fixing their distractions because it has become a habit, and habits like these are notoriously hard to break.

“For APUSH tests, I just sit down the night before and study for four hours,” junior Dan Sinacole said. “I don’t do it consecutively. I take breaks in the middle but I have to do it because I typically don’t start studying until the night before, and it would be easier if I didn’t procrastinate, but I just don’t do the work earlier.”

The sense of success can range from getting an A on a math test to succeeding expectations with SAT and ACT scores.  And it is not the class or work outside of it that prevents this type of achievement, but rather how a student proceeds with their efforts towards the work in their subjects that can lead to success.