May is a rough month for the senior population at McClintock. Once we get past the busy rush of looking into colleges, or careers, filling out FAFSA, applying for scholarships, taking the ASVAB, and studying for winter finals – suddenly it seems like the rest of the year doesn’t matter. After all, you’re already accepted into ASU, or have a job lined up, or just can’t be bothered with school anymore. And your grades don’t matter anyways, there’s no one you have to impress anymore…
Except for McClintock.
As unfortunate as it is, there’s the undeniable truth that if you aren’t able to pass a required class, you will not be able to graduate. Your time at McClintock will be extended and those dreams of moving on to the big, wide, adult world will have to wait. Even though your grades feel like they don’t matter anymore, they still have the potential to determine your future.
But, there are some strategies you can apply to keep a good work ethic, despite feeling unmotivated or detached.
1) Remind yourself of the stakes at hand. Not graduating can throw a huge wrench in your plans for the future. So, write out some of your goals for after high school (start working,go to college, travel). Then put it somewhere you’ll see often. Like a desk you like to do homework at, the mirror where you get ready in the morning, or even a daily notification on your phone. Remind yourself that there is a real, impending reward for keeping your grades up.
2) Similarly, you can give yourself small rewards for completing assignments or homework. Things like buying yourself a soda, watching a movie, or free time to enjoy a hobby can be great motivators to finish work.
3) Set timers. Part of the reason homework can seem so daunting (at least to me) is because it seems like it’ll take all day to complete. Setting an alarm (ten minutes, half an hour, or an hour) can help you feel more in control of how much time you dedicate to school. It can also help you stay focused on the task at hand and help you complete work quicker.
4) Break assignments into smaller tasks. Whenever there’s a project that’s due in two weeks you have two factors working against you. One is that the amount of work you have to do is immense and the other is that you have what seems like forever before it’s due. Combined, these things make procrastination almost impossible to resist. But, breaking a larger project into smaller pieces (with more recent deadlines) can help make the task more manageable and ensure you aren’t rushing to finish a large amount of work the night before it’s due.
5) Use rubrics. Despite teachers constantly telling students to reference their rubrics, how many of us actually listen? But rubrics have invaluable information, it tells you exactly what a teacher wants from an assignment. Completing a project without referencing the rubric is like playing darts blindfolded. You’re just guessing at what the teacher wants included. Lots of times you may do work that wasn’t asked for, and therefore won’t earn you any points (meanwhile you probably didn’t think to add something else from the rubric). You end up doing more work, for less credit. So, before starting any assignments, check what the teacher will be grading.