The school year has just started, and I’m a sophomore in French III. AP French is typically 5-7 students because Spanish is much easier. I have a LOT of classes I want to take out of pleasure, but I will not have enough hours in the day to take all of them.
I struggle with language a lot, because my teacher has a very outdated teaching style, and I’m pretty bored in class. Last year I got ~88.7, and with no plus or minus at my school, brought my GPA and my hopes down. I really like learning languages and culture, but doing poorly bringgs down my confidence. However, I recently found Tim Ferriss and his blog post about learning French in under 5 months. I have background and plenty of free time in the summer to study, so I think I might be able to gain fluency and learn about culture by next year. I’ve talked it over with a sibling, and she says I’m crazy and it’ll look like I’m doing it for college admissions and GPA, which I’m not (but it’s a nice bonus).
I’m taking all honors, two of them sciences (Bio and Chem), save French (no honors available), AP Physics 1 through Virtual VA (pretty hard), AP Euro (one of the hardest classes at my school and teacher is 1 of 4 designing the new exam), and I’m self-studying for Comp Sci, Art History, Micro/Macro, Psych, HG, and ES. I’ll be applying to a summer residential Governer’s School in the summer and a half-day school year one for STEM in the spring. Over the summer I’ll study to try and test out of Trig/Pre-Calc for Calc AB as a junior (or just a full years of Calc at the Governer’s school). Do you think it’s feasible? I’ve been trying out Cal Newport’s studying and note taking methods, and I’m pretty sure they’re more efficient than my previous methods.