"Restarting" by Juliana A.

Dear year 7 student, 

I’m a year 9 student, and lately I've been going through difficulties this year. Since the beginning of the year my routine has been really rushed and I’m not being able to manage both my assignments and my after school activities. 

During classes, I actually have a lot of ease in paying attention and doing well. I get mostly As and Bs, but I have an issue with handling all of my homework. I feel like I just get extremely overwhelmed with all the school work I have to do at home, because I spend most of my after class hours at the sports club or doing other activities, such as therapy and swimming lessons. 

I would really appreciate it if you could give me some advice on how to deal with this problem, so I can do better in school. 

Best regards, 

Year 9 student

Dear Y9 student,

I get your point when you were saying that you don’t have time to manage your routine because of your assignments and extra activities. Have you thought about talking to your parents and to teachers? It could be a good possibility, they might help you find a way of dealing with your problem.  

I think that your problem is caused mainly by your routine and your time dealing with your extra activities. This amount of homework is exhausting you. According to CreditDonkey, homework can cause stress, anxiety, depression, physical ailments, and it can lower grades, but this is not your problem, because as you said your grades vary between As and Bs.  As I can see, you’re trying to solve your problem, but you need to be committed to finding a way of solving your issues. Otherwise, these mental consequences I mentioned before might become a serious issue for your real life. If I were you, I would try to fix my routine as fast as I can, because this can cause lots of consequences for your life as a student and in your real life. A possibility could be talking to your parents, or looking for medical help so you can maintain your life and your commitments stable. If I were in your place, I would follow the advice I gave you, the chances of your routine being more stable is very high, you can improve your development in the school, to be more specific in the homework, consequently, your sleeping time will be longer.

I understand that the school is giving a lot of homework, but it is mandatory and is a part of your grade. Your main problem is to deal with homework and your extra activities. If you're not able to manage both priorities, school and extra activities, you’re not going to have time to do both. The homework will be like a snowball, and is going to increase and increase. I would strongly recommend you  to manage your routine, because maybe you can feel exhausted because of the quantity of homework you receive from your school. Not only that; a great option for you would be, to chose a day or maybe two in your week that you are going to focus the whole day on doing everything related to school, and your other priorities, those days could be in the weekend if you don’t mind. In my opinion this advice is good , because if I had the same problems and same amount of homework , I would follow the advice, and you can have other ideas for the better efficiency of your routine and of you, because you’re not going to sleep late etc … 

My main recommendation for you would be to get some friends that agree that the school is assigning a lot of homework and try to go to the coordination to see what happens, my friends did and worked. The most important thing you need to focus on is trying to adjust or think about and reflect on your routine. As I already mentioned, talking to your parents and seeing their opinion, you can get to a consensus and see the best option, it might work. Whatever you do, you need to think a lot before making this decision because if something goes wrong it can harm you, you can be affected. If I were in your place I would definitely talk to my parents before anything. For them to not worry, you could try to approach them by saying that you get great grades and this is not affecting your grades but in the future it could, then explain the problem with details and ask for their help, not only that but talking to your friends and see their point of view. I really expect that to solve this problem, because it is not good for you. I hope that my advice was helpful and useful for the resolution of this problem. I appreciate you asked for help, this shows me that you want to solve the problem, I wish the best for you.

                                                                                                                         Sincerely,

Y7 - Juliana A.