Photo by Campbell Cheers

Teacher, Ms. Jones is helping a group of kids with the lab. She is getting them started so that they can figure out who the kidnapper is.

After the first nine weeks, students have figured out what they struggle with and how they can fix it, they have found their friends again, figured out their most and least favorite classes, and what they plan to do for next semester. The first quarter was a learning experience for most students and they plan to use what they learned for the next quarter. 

“I managed to get all my work done, but I never really wanted to do any of it and sometimes my work was late and points were taken off which made me want to get my work done on time so I didn’t have to deal with that,” said freshman Aubrey Brown.

Struggling to turn work in on time was something mentioned by the students interviewed across all grade levels, these students also mentioned that they figured out fast how that affected their grades and used it to motivate them for the rest of the quarter. Using things you know brought you down to motivate you to do better is a good way to help yourself become better not only in school but in life in general.

“One thing I struggled with was being able to pay attention to everything the teachers were saying, it is really easy to get sidetracked,” said senior Aiden Brown.

Paying attention can be hard, especially first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, but it still has to happen to reach your full potential, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Finding things that help you engage such as doodle notes, writing key phrases on sticky notes, or anything that helps you that your teachers allow can be a good strategy to help you from drifting off. 

“Advice I’d give myself for next quarter to do better is do my homework, even though, I still feel like I did pretty good,” said sophomore Hailey Schiffer. 

Doing work at home can be difficult for some people because of all the distractions between family, chores, work, or pets there can be a lot of things going on that you feel like you need to pay attention to before you pay attention to school work but there can be ways that can help you get that work done if you have time at the end of another class you can work on your homework and just spending fifteen minutes after school and right before you go to bed can help you get your homework done.

“There were days when I had to stay after school to be able to get all my work done but it was worth it in the end because I did well in all my classes,” said junior Olivia Abbot.