Balancing life, school, sports, homework, and hobbies can be hard. It can be physically and emotionally exhausting and overwhelming, resulting in stress. I will share some tricks on how to have a balanced life and ensure that you can still do the things you love on top of school. 

1. Avoid procrastination. I’m really big when it comes to procrastination so this might be one of the longer tips. When you feel stressed, you might put off assignments and not show up to practice. I know it’s tempting to immediately go to bed, take a long nap after school, wake up at 3 A.M., try to finish your homework, and study for upcoming tests or quizzes after a long stressful day, especially if you do sports and clubs after school. A tip I have is to take a small break that lasts around 35-60 minutes. Eat a snack, read a book, go on your phone, and or take a nap. When that amount of time is over, drop what you are doing and go straight to doing homework. If you get easily distracted by your phone, put it in the other room. If you’re still stuck, try going to the library to finish up your work. I get easily distracted, and honestly, I feel I work better with a buddy, so after school, my friends and I go to the library and study for at least two hours. We put our phones away in our backpacks and study, focusing on the topic. If you feel like working in an environment with minimal distractions, I recommend studying in the library. Another tip I have is not to leave assignments with a long amount of time to finish at the last minute. I know it’s tempting to leave those long assignments until the last minute, but trust me, just get it done. You can always spread it out evenly throughout the time your teacher gives you to finish. For example, your English teacher assigned an essay on Monday that’s due on Friday and you need to write four paragraphs. Each day of the week you can write one paragraph, proofread it, and make adjustments so that when the assignment is due, you can turn it in with confidence and not stress that it is inaccurate or a weak assignment.
2. Be positive. Don’t let people get in the way or put you down. I know school is hard. Many adults say we are complaining about school because “back in their days” they breezed through high school and everything was easy for them. The truth is that the work now is around four times harder than back then. An example is that last year, my English class read a book called Night by Elie Wiesel. My teacher told us that he had read that book in the twelfth grade and it was hard for him back then. This shows that we have harder work than the adults had back then. So when you come home and you’re exhausted from school and an adult says “Stop complaining, I went to high school too and I survived,” just remember that the work is way harder than what they had. “Surround yourself with the people who you want to be,” is a saying I say to myself when talking to new people. Don’t surround yourself with people who discourage you and hold you back from pursuing your goals. 
3. It’s okay to say no. As an involved, outstanding student, we all want to be top of our class, lead a club, study hard, and ace tests but behind all of that, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Sometimes, that is way too much for one person to handle. An example of this can be: You’re at a club fair, and you know you can only handle doing five clubs on top of sports, so you sign up for the clubs you are interested in and your friend comes up to you and says, “Let’s sign up for photography, it will be so fun!” However, you have already signed up for as many clubs as you can, so what do you say to your friend? The polite answer is, “Sorry, I have signed up for x amount of clubs already, maybe next year?” When saying no, you don’t need to be harsh about it, just a simple polite “No” is already enough.
4. Sleep is the most important out of all of these tips. For me, I get no sleep. Last year I was the type of student who came home, took a nap, woke up late, tired to finish all of my work, and still tried to get a good night’s sleep. A tip that has helped me this year is to set a chronological alarm which every 5 minutes goes off so that I officially wake up. For example, I usually get home around 5 o’clock because I do sports and clubs. I go and take a nap, and I know I’m not waking up in an hour, so I set an alarm that wakes me up once, I press snooze, and five minutes later it goes off again I press snooze, the last time the alarm goes off I turn off my alarm jump out of bed and gather my materials for homework to study and start. Once I finish my homework, I get to my other after-school sport and come home to eat dinner. Now, I still have time to sleep, and I won’t have to cram in all my assignments at the last minute.

In the last section of last school year and the beginning of this school year, I did all of these tricks, and so far, I had a great night’s sleep, I had time to do the things I love, and can manage my time properly. I do recommend these tips for struggling students because honestly, I wasn’t a really good student last year, and these tips helped so far. I have outstanding grades, doing multiple clubs and sports at once, and can do the hobbies I love.