<p>Of course it takes time. Just less.
One thing that helped me is that I learned how to cut corners efficiently. For example, last year in my AP Comparative Politics course, homework was always just to read the next chapter and answer reading questions to be discussed in class. The questions were never collected or graded - so I didn’t do them, because I could learn the material just as well and be ready for class discussion after just glancing over them. Other students would come to class with page long answers to each question - my answers would be a few bullet points, if that. My time was better spent, as you said, getting other work done for other classes. It’s things like these that allowed me to take twice as many APs as other people - not because I was infinitely smarter, but because I could learn well without doing much of the busy work (which is what most of high school homework is), and instead spend time on, yes, the 10-page term papers.</p>
<p>I don’t think either of my high schoolers ever had a 10-page term paper assignment, even the one who took 6 AP classes! Some of your kids must attend very tough high schools.</p>
<p>TheGFG, I was not lying when I wrote that classwork/ECs/tests came easy to my Ivy-student D in high school. Although she has never been tested, I was told by a family-friend psychologist, that she likely has an extremely high IQ, so I assume that helps. She is also very outgoing and athletically talented (nationally ranked), and performs her best when under pressure. Most things in life DO come easy to her, and she never had a “melt-down” about high-school life, other than a relationship with a boy. So these types of students DO exist. My other two children, however, are not like her in these ways.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t exactly call myself a genious but im preety high on my class rank and have a pretty good gpa(I wish it was better lmao) and I really haven’t had much trouble with school.I dont/didn’t spend hours studying.in fact, I do my class/hw busy work and copy the notes only because some of my teachers collet notebooks for a part of ur final grade.Im lucky I guess and have a picture perfect memory.I remember EVERYTHING and if I don’t it usually comes to me relatively quickly.Im also a great test taker.I have always been the first person done with since since grade school.actually this past year on my chem final I finished so quickly my teacher was gonna give me another test because she thought I cheaped.oh btw I got a 99% on that exam :D</p>
<p>M D and her friends had a very active social life. The group of high school friends included 7 of the top 8 students in their small class (75), plus two others who were smart slackers and one lovable “average” kid. Stats-wise, I would guess they were all in the 1850-2200 range, and all of them are attending good but not tip-top schools (as far as I know, they were all admitted to their first choices, mostly “top 50” according to the rankings). There were times I wished my D would have focused more on test-prep and grades, but her friends were more important to her (and that was true of all of them). And looking back on it, I am glad they didn’t obsess over academics. We live in Europe during the school year, and I’m sure my D will always treasure memories of crazy fun times exploring on her own with her friends.</p>
<p>One thing I noticed is that D and her friends managed to get a lot done during the school day. Granted, this wasn’t a pressure-cooker environment, but it is considered a good school. These kids took 2-3 APs each year (all that were available) and did a fair amount of reading/homework during their other classes. I know my D did pull occasional all-nighters, but she accepted them as the price to pay for also having a full social life. I didn’t interfere except to insist that she ride the bus rather than drive on those days.</p>
<p>I don’t think either of my high schoolers ever had a 10-page term paper assignment, even the one who took 6 AP classes! Some of your kids must attend very tough high schools.</p>
<p>Seriously?
not even including citation page and footnotes?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t describe my D as a " top " student, especially not at her high school- where the top students of the region often attend.</p>
<p>One of her best friends- is unusually responsible, accomplished and energetic.
She was a valedictorian & is going to be attending Georgetown on need & merit aid.
She takes many AP classes, she is one of senior staff in school activity ( outward bound type) program & she works as a lifeguard in the city pool.
She doesn’t have quite the social life that the daughters of my friends have, I often hear about summer beach parties and long car trips. When you have to get up early for work, that does put a crimp in your social life, if you want more unscheduled time.
However, for young women like D and her friend, they have always found their social needs to be filled during their activities as well as with unscheduled time.
I don’t think they see themselves as missing out & I really don’t think they are.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, but no. Our high school’s English department is weak. When D wrote her first 7-pager during her first semester at college, she noted that it was the longest paper she had ever written.</p>
<p>Yep, we need a definition of “top.”
If “top” is top 5%, all honors, accelerated math and science in 9th grade, maximum ap’s, 2100+ sat, straight-A, then my S fits the bill. However, he’s really not a “nerd” or a grind. I deliberately put him in a school with very little busy work. He’s not an athlete, but he does music ec’s four days a week, get home from school around 5:30, relaxes, plays a little video game, talks to his friends online, then does hw. He’s in bed by 11 (actually, 10:45) every night. Though he has a job weekends, his closest friend, ranked #2, works during the week also. He’s heavily involved in the school play, and at that time of year I know he feels the crunch, but other than that he leads what I think is a pretty normal life, which I encourage. He pays attention in class, takes wicked notes, and gets annoyed when class time is wasted. He manages his time extremely well. But I definitely think also some kids are just quick when it comes to school work, can review the material once if they pay attention in class, and do fine on the tests. He has had a LOT of papers to write, but he enjoys that.</p>
<p>My son had perhaps two or three ten page papers a year between English/History/Economics type courses. He usually wrote a couple pages less than suggested, but his writing style is compact and it didn’t seem to hurt him. His calculus teacher homework assignments were often to do as many problems as they felt they needed to nail down the concepts. By the way, despite not having tons of writing assignments in high school he did quite well in his history and freshman composition classes in college.</p>
<p>S has been able to cram so much more into his college life than his high school life, because to a greater degree college students can set their own schedules and decide on their own what it takes to learn the material. Also, there is no busy work. In college (Ivy) he works 2 jobs, is editor of a scholarly publication, is an officer in a state level organization, is a frat member (and now officer I think), attends a religious group’s meetings, plays intramural b-ball and soccer, has a GF, and I’m sure there’s more. He can do all that because he’s bright, motivated, organized, and efficient. He had all those same qualities in high school, but was in no way able to nearly as much. To a much larger degree other people control your time when you’re a high school student. You have a fixed class schedule from Monday to Friday for 7 hours a day plus another 1/2 hour to hour for bus transportation, you have to attend class even though you don’t need to, you have to do homework even though for you it’s a waste of time because it’s part of your grade, you can’t leave your band lesson early even though you’ve mastered the part because others haven’t, and you probably aren’t allowed to socialize at 3 AM like you can in college.</p>
<p>While I get what Jessie is saying and see that that works for S now, it didn’t in high school because of the paternalistic way classes are taught.</p>
<p>That sounds true. A lot of time is wasted in high school.
I forgot to add what my S does for fun: movies, local coffee shop where the kids hang out and play scrabble, eating out, massive video game parties, amusement parks, local theatre productions. Others I can’t think of right now. (Of course, gf’s take massive amts. of time he just finished a two year relationship.) Point is that unless kids are really pushing (or being pushed) to build a resume of extremely impressive ec’s and community service, I think a balanced social life is very possible.</p>
<p>The kids I know that have one huge passion usually pursue that after school for hours, but make time for social life when they’re not dancing/debating/playing piano. I try and strike that balance, being a motivated high schooler myself. I love creative writing and debate, and my afternoons usually have two hours of extracurriculars, then homework, but I find time to call or Facebook friends in the interim. My weekends are usually full of debate tournaments and church, but I’ll still go to parties and the mall. </p>
<p>However, I do know kids whose parents hardly let them see the light of day. They’re the stereotype of “Asian” propagated on these boards, except they’re of every ethnicity. I feel bad for these kids, shuttled from Science Olympiad practice to piano to swimming with their parents screeching the whole time about academic competitions, grades, and haven’t they done their homework yet? Those kids I never see just hanging out (except in school), but I find the self-motivated ones to be able to strike a nice balance, even if it’s not quite as social as our parents adolescence.</p>
Lawl, this is exactly me, on the computer at least 6 hours a day on schooldays and 10+ hours in summer…minus the reading 100 fantasy novels, learning Linux or w/e…and I also play a lot of games.</p>
<p>I really don’t know if I’m “smart” or not, never really thought about it - other than I don’t remember studying ever for longer than 30 minutes straight on my own in my entire life; and freshman year this year was sleeping/gaming/computer, and I hung around with friends, never ever studied and was still ridiculously easy. Of course, I don’t attend one of those super high schools so maybe…</p>
<p>In response to an earlier post about there being no way you could take AP classes and still have a lot of free time, I took all the AP classes I could, but I actually rarely got lots of homework. My AP calc class was pretty work intense, but not as much as at some other schools, and for my senior AP English class, we never even really wrote a full essay. . .</p>
<p>Post 58: I agree with the part about there being no substitute for time. I do not agree that students who put in those levels of time are necessarily being ‘pushed’ by parents, necessarily live on 4 hours of sleep (mine didn’t, because she simply couldn’t), are “unhealthful,” “have meltdowns,” have parents who do their HW or research for them, etc. Wow, you live in some kind of environment, I must say.</p>
<p>Like marite’s S, some true students actually get a kick out of studying. Mine did. Call us weird.</p>
<p>(But no, they had “no” – i.e., little – social life, again, by choice. They wove their social life into their academics & e.c.'s, because many of their friends were acquired in both.) D1 has more social life in college, actually.</p>
<p>It’s worked out so far. So far, she doesn’t seem inordinately damaged or “unhealthful.” </p>
<p>You guys dont know that those crazy smart people like yi sun and allen lin exist.</p>
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<p>It actually is possible…if you learn everything the summer before (although I’ve yet to meet anyone else who’s actually attempted this). It also helps when few of the teachers assign anything time-consuming. 80% of my homework the past 3 years came from English class, true story.</p>
<p>Of my three kids, I have one that was one of those top kids. I agree that he just “got it”. He and his other friends were able to spend less time studying and working on school because he got it the first time. He had the biggest social life of all my three because the other two had to really hit the books and had less time to socialize. My S also had over 400 hours of volunteer hours(he is really into church activities)and worked 20 hours a week and took a full AP load. He had loads of time to have fun! He never gave up anything. How he can do it, I don’t know. But he does. Honest.</p>
<p>I’m another one of those time-management + naturally-intelligent = success sort of people. I have a long commute to and from school, and I do a fair amount of homework there. I also do some at school, when I’m not busy during lunch or free periods. The result? I usually get home around 6, “start homework” around 7, and go to bed at 10 or 11 having done maybe an hour of work.</p>
<p>I don’t have a strong social life, but that’s not due to academics. It’s just that I live far away from most of my friends and my parents are pretty strict about me being out of the house alone at night. I usually spend my Saturdays zoning out, watching TV and reading some light books (I get most of my serious reading done on the way to school) and watching a movie at night with my family. Sundays I have piano lessons and then it’s relaxation for another few hours and then around 7 PM I start studying. Again, in bed by 10.</p>
<p>I’ll have a better social life in college, I know, because everything will be there and I won’t have to worry about my parents driving me everywhere and being on time to catch a certain train/boat/whatever. So in my case, it’s not schoolwork that deters me from having an active social life, but rather the other effects of going to school so far away.</p>
<p>S1 is a top student, top grades, top scores. He is involved in two sports and does some activities and volunteerism, though not to the extent as some of the kids on CC. He is EXTREMELY normal with a normal social life. He is not interested in parties and hanging out with large groups of people, but he has friends, dates girls, relaxes, hangs out with friends, has a job, does his sports year round in clubs, intermurals, and just for fun with friends.</p>
<p>He has many AP classes, and amazes me with how little homework he has. Well, in his case, he always took a study hall, and I am now learning that he actually does his homework in class (physics homework during physics class, math homework during math class), and only has to write papers at home.</p>
<p>He too is one of those kids who catches on very quickly and can read and digest in 1/2 the time as some of his classmates. Time management is obviously important, as he does not waste his study hall (or those few minutes in class when there is free time.)</p>
<p>The last paragraph in post 78 here is what makes the difference between time in h.s. & time in college, for the student. Sounds like this student had to figure in commute time, as my D did. Add to that the e.c. commitment (if intense, if daily, if off-campus). Add to that the ‘non-academic’ high school day such as required assemblies & the like – elements that are particular to h.s., not college. But it’s the efficiency of time/space on a college campus that frees up about 4-5 daily hrs. that were once consumed, pre-college. Many more social opportunities for that same student in college.</p>
<p>I also think that there are marked variations, among high schools, in homework expectations, and that this is affecting the baseline here, more than the phrase ‘top students,’ even. One poster referred to very little homework in AP courses; others have extended that to homework in general (or by implication). Depends on the standards of the school & the individual teachers/classes. In demanding private schools, it would not be possible to do what some posters have alleged they or their S/D’s can do. Has nothing to do with IQ, speed of comprehension, cognitive retention, or even speed/ease of writing. Has to do with assignments & the expectations of those. In my D’s case, this was heightened, not lessened, if it was an AP course.</p>
<p>Also, in my work right now I am shocked to see high schoolers in publics get away with so few courses in the school day. Four? Wow. Try 7,8.</p>
<p>Epiphany, Four classes a day is called block scheduling. They classes are twice as long as a standard day. That way they can delve more deeply into subjects because they have an hour plus. This is especiallly good for AP courses with discussions, labs, etc. The homework is two days’ worth as well. They take 8 courses every two days for twice as long as if they took 8 courses each day. So there are not fewer courses, just longer classes! My kids go 8-3:50 and take four classes a day.</p>
he just finished a two year relationship.) Point is that unless kids are really pushing (or being pushed) to build a resume of extremely impressive ec’s and community service, I think a balanced social life is very possible.</p>