Balancing school and extracurricular activities can be tough sometimes, especially during high school where it seems like that’s all that matters. It takes good judgement of time to include everything into a perfect schedule.  Many Dublin high students have managed to pull it off and offer some great advice.

Involved in activities such as leadership, track and cross country, and Valley Care Hospital volunteering, junior Annalisa Watson is certainly one of these students.

“I manage by constantly planning and estimating my time and delegating a certain amount of time for things,” Watson says. “I have to eliminate distractions and maintain a reward system.”

Time is the key factor to creating a well organized schedule.  On days piled up with activities, planning and designating enough time to each activity can help you stay on track and make sure that everything gets done.  Even rewarding yourself for keeping up with a hard yet efficiently organized day can be motivation to do it all again.

“Turning off my phone helps me [be] in a distraction free environment and taking breaks,” Watson says.

Factoring out all distractions–even ones as small as phones and miscellaneous items can be enough to get all extracurriculars done on time. They only take away from efficiently balancing both school and extracurricular activities.

“It’s hard to balance school and other activities, but don’t procrastinate,” junior Brittany Le says.

Procrastination keeps people from actually completing all their necessary activities.  Good judgement of time is key to maintaining balance in all activities–to make sure everything gets done on time. Procrastination will only make this tougher, and cause a student to fit all their activities and plans in just a few days.

The four years of high school are when having an organized and effective schedule matters the most. Colleges like to see that students are able to maintain high grades while participating in other activities outside of school. Even though it can be tough at times, managing time wisely and carefully planning out ways to fit in extracurricular activities with school work, can make balancing simpler.