<p>So I’m 15 and a sophomore. I go to a competitive all girls school, with a heavy course load. I take honors english, honors math, and AP European History, and I also sing with the select ensemble, the choir, and take private music lessons. </p>
<p>As of right now, I really want to major in voice performance or music education in college. I would get my graduate degree in music, or education ideally, but if for some reason that doesn’t work out, I would probably go for law or business. My ideal career would be performing and teaching at the high school or college level, either in a school or a studio.</p>
<p>The problem is that with my heavy course load and extracurriculars, it is taking a toll on my sleep, and that effects my voice and my performance in school. Other than private voice, I take two hours of dance a week (for PE credit, and to help with singing performance. I need to take them to graduate though. I actually still need to do another 90 minutes per week of some physical activity) And debate team (I do policy debate, might start doing speech. I go to debate almost every day for two hours a day.) Debate takes up a lot of time. I liked last year, my first year because I did very well, and we didn’t have to do a lot of work. Also, I made all my friends on the team, and it felt like family. It felt good to win things. Now as a varsity member, I need to do a lot of work at home including research and filing, and practicing, which would take up even more time. I went to camp for a month, and my parents paid a lot of money, so if I quit now, it would kind of be thousands of dollars down the drain. </p>
<p>I kind of want to quit to just focus on school and music - I need to get a private tutor (for math and history, where my grades are suffering), take SAT prep classes, drivers ED, and hopefully piano (I’ve been teaching myself) but I don’t have time. I sleep 5 hours a night on average. This week I went to bed at 12:30am the first two nights, woke up at 3:00am to study the second two mornings, and then finally got 7 hours of sleep the last night. My memory and voice are suffering. I’m good at debate, and have a commitment to my partner, but it just isn’t fun to me anymore. All day through school and debate, all I think about it music. What should I do? I kind of want to switch to public forum, which would be less work and time, or just do speech, which I’d probably be good at and would take up less time. Do you think it is important that I stay on the team? How should I propose to my parents switching? I would also feel bad about my partner and coaches, because the coaches think we are “outstanding” and we should debate together. I certainly won’t debate in college. I’m thinking maybe I’ll go through with it this year, and then quit next year. How else could I possibly manage my time better? For me, it is really important that I get sleep for the sake of my voice, because really, nothing else means as much to me as singing does. I went to debate camp hoping that if I went, my love for it would grow as I got better, but camp actually made me dislike debate in a lot of ways. It is just so stressful!</p>