Balancing school work with other after school activities in high school can help students improve time management and ultimately achieve high academic success. Although, students may worry that adding extracurricular activities to their plate will negatively impact their academic success. Trying to juggle the workload from classes and extra activities added to their plate may cause stress to students that can lead to negative effects on their grades.
“I don’t have as much time to do my homework because of my sports practice after school,” sophomore Hadde Luebke said. “I can’t study for tests as long as I need to get a good grade.”
Students who struggle with finding time to keep up with school work after their extracurricular activities may try and seek help through tutoring from their teachers.
“I try to go to counseling or tutoring to help raise my grade or do better on a test, but a lot of the time, it does not help me,” Luebke said.
Counseling and tutoring can be beneficial for some students, but not all. An alternative to getting school work done at home could be using school time during class rather than after school. This can help students work on their time management and worry less about cramming school work in after an extracurricular activity.
“I use my study hall and free periods to study instead of doing it at home, where I should be doing it,” Luebke said.
On the other hand, many students find time management easy even when participating in extracurricular activities. Participating in after school activities may push students to work harder academically because school work is a top priority for them.
“In order to be eligible to play, [the students] have to meet criteria that the school has set for them,” math teacher and Varsity Field Hockey head coach Terry Dewing said. “It keeps them accountable because the coaches check their grades on a weekly basis and we get a report sent to us.”
Students that participate in an extracurricular activity with school need to keep their grades up in order to be eligible. Extracurricular sports and clubs may take students’ minds off of school work until they have to reconnect with the work after their activities.
“Sports and working out is like a natural stress reliever,” senior Matthew Lawrence said. “It helps me get over taking a test or worrying about tests.”
Time management helps students organize their daily routine and get things done in a timely manner. Students who participate in activities outside of school claim doing so has improved their time management.
“Time management is like the basis of high school and eventually college,” Lawrence said. “That’s something you need to know or learn, at least when you are in an extracurricular activity.”
Time management helps students who participate in after school activities stay organized when the school workload is heavy. All students handle their school work and activities differently. Extracurricular activities can affect academic success in positive and negative ways. Students who participate in an activity after school can either crumble under the pressure or rise to the occasion in order to reach a balance between academics and activities.
