@athenanv13 Can I participate in a nearby schools HOSA program? I can’t believe I had no idea it existed. Oh, and when is state?
@sprights To make you feel any better, I’m only in the top 40%. Terrible sophomore year at a very competitive public high school.
@Cece0499 I had no clue it existed either until I went on CC a year ago! I definitely think you can contact a nearby school to join but I would highly recommend starting your own club. I don’t know if it’s just me but it’s nice to be in charge. As for state, I would look it up on your state HOSA website and you can find everything there
I’m working on an essay right now (not for school) and it feels like I’m pulling out teeth. It’s due tonight and I just keep thinking about everything else I have to do. Bleh!
At least I start a new math class tomorrow! Also a new musical, and a new art class. I’m excited for the beginning of the semester.
@athenanv13 so your school has a chapter which students are in control of? I thought it was run by a teacher lol
@Cece0499 lol, Ya, students are in charge. We have officer positions that run the club. The teacher just sits around and stays on her computer the whole time and signs paperwork. But make sure you find a really laid back teacher for your sponsor.
@GrandBudapest I can guarantee you, your sophomore year couldn’t have been worse than mine, you can read down my threads if you want to feel better lol. I hope both of our ranks go up though. 
@athenanv13 thank you so much for this information haha! If you don’t mind me asking…what are you guys working on right now? (:
@sprights Are you sure about that? I got 6 B’s last year (3 each semester in Calculus AB, Honors Chemistry, and Java). My biggest regret is taking Java last year. I only took it because many of my friends at my STEM oriented school said that it was super easy (and open-note tests and quizzes!), but I still struggled tremendously.
I’m extremely worried about my rank because while CCers always say it’s okay if your GPA is low as long as your rank is within the top 10%, which would indicate that your school just grades hard, mine is in the 4th decile. I don’t think colleges will recognize that teachers at my school do grade extremely difficult (in fact my AP Chemistry teacher this year said that the vast majority of her students would get A’s at any other school), but everyone here is highly motivated and has got the smarts! It’s one thing going to a school with grade deflation but a relatively average student body, but another to go to one which practices grade deflation but with students able to overcome it and still get A’s.
I hope (and know) we can both do better this year (I think even if I do get straight A’s next semester, I’ll only be in the top 30%, but that’s still better than now 
)!
@Cece0499 We just got back from break so we are not doing much right now besides preparing for state. But usually, we either volunteer somewhere (on Saturdays), have a guest speaker, learn medical stuff (like CPR), go on field trips (like we did a cadaver lab), and a whole bunch of other stuff 
It’s super fun!
Ahhh I have my pre calc final tomorrow! RIP to my GPA.
I mean…I can do this if I just put my mind to it and be positive!!! !!:!:!::!:!:D:D:D:D:D::D:D:D:D:
@MissSuzyQ Wishing you the best of luck!
And, a more general note to all of us, remember that class rank/GPA/scores say nothing about our value as human beings we’re all real, live, breathing, interesting, interested, cool people with hopes and dreams and aspirations and loves and experiences, and no number can take that away.
I’m usually good at not procrastinating. Guess what I’m doing right now…procrastinating…guess who’s going to pull an all-nighter?
I have five tests this week…and I haven’t started studying for any of them
@athenanv13 You chose the IB life, haha. \o
@GrandBudapest if colleges routinely accept high numbers of students from your school, I’d assume they’d know that your school is very competitive. Never lose hope!
@loquatical same. I have a chemistry test tomorrow and I haven’t started studying (read: I know nothing about the unit other than what we’ve done in labs), which is probably a bad thing. Every time I slack off and say, “well, I’m doing well in chem,” I sorely regret it. I also had a calculus test today (rip because our teacher made a typo and one of the questions was impossible; I therefore didn’t have the time to plug numbers into my calculator for another one) and I have an English quiz Wednesday, a lab final for chem Thursday, a physics quiz either Thursday or Friday, and the written part of my calc final Friday.
I hate junior year.
I know this is silly but… I’m still going to put it out here since I have almost no one in real life to vent to:
There’s this girl who I was close friends with last year, but then we had a fall-out early first semester this year. I usually am tight-lipped about college stuff but I told her about how I wanted to attend an LAC (listed my top choices to her) and possibly major in English…
Well, first semester junior year rolls around and we are no longer friends despite being super close last year, but she is doing basically the SAME activities as me. NEHS, Debate, school science magazine, and now this art volunteering club that I’m an officer of. I have a few other ECs outside of those that she doesn’t partake in, but I don’t hold leadership positions (and don’t expect to) in those. The kicker is that she has a higher GPA than me and has befriended officers of many of those aforementioned clubs in hopes of securing a leadership role next year (perhaps shutting me out in the process). Keep in mind I’m an officer of only one club.
Now I’m worried that next year she’ll apply to the same schools as me (maybe just out of spite, too!). Few students at my school apply to LACs, and given our similar ECs, her talkativeness with teachers (we share the same English teacher, though different periods) which should guarantee her a solid letter of recommendation, and higher GPA, she’s bound to get accepted while I get rejected. I was hoping that the fact that few of my peers apply to LACs might have given me a slight boost (if any). I can just imagine her haughtily smirking at me come senior year, with the name BOWDOIN emblazoned on her sweatshirt, as if worn only to mock me and my failed aspirations.
The only “good” thing to come out of this situation is that after my failed sophomore year (which I attribute to my lack of focus – namely, hours chatting with her online after-school when I should’ve been doing my homework and studying for tests) – my grades first semester junior year were stellar. I guess now she is what could be called an academic rival.
Am I wrong to feel this way? It’s strange typing this whole story out because I am never this competitive. Usually I am in my own lane and don’t pay much mind to how others are doing academically, and only compare myself to them to serve as some sort of motivation (if they can do it, so can I! – that type of thing). One one hand, I feel that this worrying is just a waste of time and reflects badly on the trajectory of my character. To be honest, however, I don’t wish her to fail; she could go to Harvard for all I care. I just don’t want her to apply to the same LACs! On the other hand, she has energized me and has given me some purpose when I could easily be going through the motions without any direction or desire, as I did last year, and return to my mediocre academic performance.
Wow – I didn’t expect this post to be so long. If you’ve actually made it this far in reading my post, do you have any advice?
@tonystarkofwinterfell Thanks for the support! Many kids from my school do attend / get accepted to great schools, but most of the times they are UCs or large research universities (Johns Hopkins, WashU, etc.). Few people at my school have applied to the LACs I hope to attend (Hamilton, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Vassar, etc.) so there’s not much data to go by. Plus, those who did get accepted had much higher GPA’s than me, except for Hamilton. Ugh.
Good luck on your tests. Haha, I’m also struggling in chemistry. I really should’ve taken AP Bio this year instead.