Dear underclassman, 

When people used to tell me high school would fly by, I never believed them. It was an amazing four years for me, even though I didn’t love every second of it. There are so many ups and downs and lessons learned. You change a lot over the years. I have one core piece of advice I would give any underclassman. It might sound stupid to you now, but it actually will help you in the long run.

I know no teen wants to hear this, but the first piece of advice I would give is the biggest. DO YOUR WORK. If you stay on top of it and get it done in school when it is assigned, it will make your life ten times easier. If you procrastinate, you’ll end up with 20-plus assignments at the end of the quarter. Therefore, instead of doing your work for 20 minutes when assigned, you spend days doing all of your work at once. Not only that, but also teachers will not give you full credit when it is late (especially months late). You’re missing out on easy points by simply just being lazy. If you’re going to listen to anyone about doing your work, take it from me. In my tenth-grade year during COVID, I got lazy and lost my motivation and drive for school. My grades after that were never the best but I was getting by barely. When it came to applying to colleges, I realized I hurt myself by not doing my work for so long. My list of schools I got into was so tiny. I didn’t get into my first or second school choice, which devastated me. I barely received any scholarships or grants, either. I kind of hurt myself because I have so much potential. I was always just too lazy and made excuses for myself. Now, I just started realizing how easy it is to stay on top of school and I changed my grades to make them good. 

Now it’s the fourth quarter of my senior year and my grades look great. I’m pulling 90s in multiple classes. Everyone is so proud of me, but I am overall most proud of myself. Just know you can do it! All you need to do is stop making excuses.

Abbey Hart ‘22