New Year’s Resolutions for High School Freshmen
January 8, 2012
It’s 2012 – have you made your New Year’s Resolutions yet? In this series of posts, we’re going to offer some resolutions for students in each year of high school. Feel free to adopt one or two! Good luck!
Freshman year in high school can be a pretty tricky time. You’re out of middle school (finally!) and now playing in the “big league”: high school! By now, though, you’ve had a bit of time to adjust to your new school – it’s physical layout, your teachers, your homework and all of the new friends you’ve met. Here are some New Year’s Resolutions for you to consider:
- Earn good grades! Start your high school career off correctly by doing your best academically. Competition for college is fierce, so give yourself a leg up by getting good grades right from the start. Even though college seems a long way off now, you’ll be applying before you know it! It’s harder to raise your grades in a year or two than it is to do well from the beginning.
- Join a club or sport. Getting involved in your high school’s extracurriculars will allow you to meet even more people and expand your interests. Like music? Join the band or glee club. Enjoy photography? Think newspaper or yearbook. Into wrestling, swimming or baseball? Try out for the teams. An added bonus is that colleges are looking for these types of activities.
- Plan a summer internship. Even though you are too young to get a paying job over the summer, you can volunteer to work with professionals in a career you might like to pursue. You won’t have to work 80-hour weeks – even just a few hours a week will give you a taste of the profession. It’s a great way to figure out if you truly want to follow in their footsteps.
- Read. While college entrance exams are still a few years off, one thing you can do to prepare for them is to read books. Both the SAT and ACT test your knowledge of vocabulary, critical reading and English, so why not broaden your vocabulary now? It’s more fun to read a good book than to try to memorize words off of flashcards!
- Sign up for the SAT 2s. If you are taking any AP or Honors courses, you might want to consider signing up for the SAT 2s. You definitely want to take these one-hour tests as soon as you get through the class in high school so that you don’t forget all the material! For some info about the SATs, listen to this podcast.
High school freshmen, what are your resolutions? How are you doing with them? We’d love to hear from you! Stay tuned for more New Year’s Resolutions for other high school years!
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