At the beginning of the school year, students tell themselves, “This year, I’ll do better than last year.” However, there’s usually something standing in the way of students’ success when it comes to grades. While the type of distraction varies from student to student, everyone has their bad habit that they find hard to break once the school year starts.
Soph. Alex Coy found herself struggling this year due to a lack of studying for assessments. “After I get a test back in chemistry that I didn’t do very well on, I always tell myself that I’ll study harder for it next time. But every single time, I blow off studying for something else more appealing and I just keep getting grades on tests that I know I can do better on.”
Another common grade-decreaser for students is Netflix. The easy-to-use app makes for an almost effortless procrastination method. “Once I started watching a show, I’d be addicted. I’d be binge-watching One Tree Hill instead of studying or finishing homework. It became a bad habit that I wasn’t able to stop all year,” Frosh. Danielle Kuiper said.
Kuiper is not alone when it comes to watching a great deal of Netflix that results in unsatisfactory grades. Soph. Morgan Goddard could often be found sitting on her phone watching Friday Night Lights as opposed to doing school-related work. “I think that watching continuous episodes of Netflix instead of doing homework is just a really bad habit that, unfortunately, a lot of students can’t break,” Goddard said.
Others find work, sports and other extracurricular activities to be just completely overwhelming, and that seems to hurt students’ grades as well. “I have to work most school nights, so I don’t usually have a whole lot of time to really focus on school work and make sure that I’m really doing a good quality job on it,” Jr. Emily VanDyke said. While some students find work to be the problem, it’s different for all students. “Sometimes getting involved in too many things at once, like clubs and sports, get in the way of good grades because students can end up with too much on their plate and forget what they need to do. It can make students feel like they’re way too busy to study or get homework done,” Sr. Lauren Valentine said.
Along with working a job, many students know that playing a sport takes a majority of time and energy, not leaving much left for focus on school work. “I think that by the time I’m done with practice or a game, I’m so exhausted and basically don’t have enough energy to actually do a good job on my homework,” Frosh. Olivia Salas said.
As many high schoolers would agree with, social media takes up a great deal of our time every day. Some may say, that teens may even be addicted to social media such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, etc. “Whenever I try to do my homework, I always end up getting distracted by constant notifications. Like especially on Snapchat, there’s a sort of pressure to always respond because you want to keep your snap streaks with people, and you only have a limited amount of time to do that,” Frosh. Chloe Karp said.
All in all, students all have that one thing that keeps them from getting the grade they want. Whether they’re distracted by social media or Netflix, too lazy to study, busy with extracurricular activities, or drained of energy by sports, jobs, etc. all high school teens can relate to the struggle of breaking whatever habit they’ve created. Once students start a habit that hurts their grade, it becomes difficult to stop it from continuing. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t push through it and work hard for the grade that they desire.
