Ask Me Questions

High School Q&A

High school isn't like what you see in TV shows and movies. Sure, there will be drama, that's a given in life. But high school isn't as hard as some people make it out to be, and I have some advice for you guys.

How do you deal with stress?

Take time to treat yourself. Not everything has to be about school. Take a step back and relax some. Read a book. Write a chapter for your WIP (work in progress). Go out with some friends. Just relax some. You will make it through.

Do you have any study tips?

Literally, in high school, I just read the notes the night before/before the class and memorized it. I have a bit of a photographic memory so it was easy for me to do that. Ask me again after I start my one class this fall because it's an intro to university life class and one of the main things covered is figuring out how to study.

What class did you enjoy taking the most in high school?

I honestly love math and science classes. I can say by far though my favorite class was from my senior year (so this past year). It was Anatomy & Physiology. That's the line of classes I'll be taking for the next 6 years. I'm actually taking Anatomy & Physiology I plus the lab for the class this fall, and Anatomy & Physiology II plus the lab in the spring. I love learning about the body and how it works. Kinda why I'm majoring in health sciences and minoring in biology. My second favorite class was calculus (sadly I don't have to take that in college) because it actually requires you to think and just not plug things in.

Tips on managing sports outside of school, clubs, academics, social life, and a healthy sleep schedule.

I may not be the best to ask this, but I'll try. First, your mental health and well being comes first. So don't stay up all night (Something I learned the hard way. Although it wasn't always completely by choice because I have insomnia.) to finish schoolwork. Sports and clubs should honestly come last. I don't have much of a social life so I can't really comment on that. Like the last time I went out with friends was in January 2017.

When did you find out what you wanted to do after high school?

I didn't really think about what I wanted to do until my freshman, and we got an assignment where we had to write a paper on what we wanted to do. I knew I wanted to go into the medical field. At first, I started out thinking about being an STNA (state tested nurse's aid). Then my sophomore year, I decided that I would go for nursing. Finally, my junior year after doing some extensive research on physician assistants and decided that's what I want to do (and it for sure get me out of my hometown and county).

Tell about the USA school system.

That's honestly probably beneficial for anyone who reads this and the next few parts and isn't from the US. There are 13 grades technically, but we don't number them the same as they do in pretty any other country that uses a numbered grade system. We start with kindergarten which is like grade 1 everywhere else. Then our first grade (which comes after kindergarten) is like grade 2 everywhere else. It continues like that up to our final grade which is 12th grade and everyone else's grade 13. High school in the US gets a little weird because there will be terms like freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior thrown in the mix. Those correspond to a grade 9-12 and are just other terms to use instead of saying 9th grade, 10th grade, and so on. Freshman are 9th graders. Sophomores are 10th graders. Juniors are 11th graders. Seniors are 12th graders.

We also call in just college in general while almost everyone else calls in university. There is a distinction technically, but the terms college and university are used interchangeably here. The actual distinction is that university is a collection of colleges and college is a division of the university. Like I'm going to Cleveland State University, but the actual college for my major is called the College of Sciences and Health Professions.