Attaining a good GPA was always a goal that I needed to achieve. My sister who is 6 years older than me, served as an exemplary model of what a student should aspire to be. Each year, my sister would challenge herself with AP classes and still managed to achieve Honors roll. Given this circumstance, my sister set the bar very high and I knew that I would be subject to elevated expectations from my parents, which I needed to meet.

To start off, my school unfortunately does not have a weighted GPA as many other high schools do. I was immediately put at a disadvantage because I was enrolling in AP and Dual Credit courses as my sister had. Regardless of the difficulty and stress that the class brought, my GPA would be evaluated no differently as to those of my peers who are not taking equally demanding courses. With that being said, throughout my high school career I employed different strategies in order to boost my GPA. I discovered that certain activities were extremely beneficial and others too time consuming and taxing in comparison to the result I achieved in the end.

Initially, I adopted the strategy of incorporating a planner into my daily routine as a means to improve my GPA. A planner was something that my school district and teachers had been trying to get me to utilize since I could read. They said it’s helpful with organization and staying on top of things. While this may be true, up until high school, you were forced to use the planner in classes and write down your daily learning objective. Once I got to high school I discovered that it was far more challenging to take the initiative to write down my plans. However, once freshman year was over, I began involving myself in extracurricular activities since we were now given the opportunity (COVID). Due to the inclusion of advanced classes, work and extracurricular activities, I encountered significant difficulties in effectively managing my calendar. The planner helped me prioritize the tasks that I knew needed to be completed and ensured that I was not late or behind on any of my assignments.

Another strategy that I implemented with the goal of improving my GPA is the use of my teacher’s office hours after school, lunches and their off periods. I found it convenient that if there was anything I had pressing questions on or misunderstood in the lessons, I could engage in a quick 5 minute conversation with them to gain a deeper understanding of the content.

The most recent method I attempted to execute was multitasking. Due to the multitude of commitments in my life, such as extracurriculars, work and school, I frequently tried to complete more than one assignment at a time. For instance, watching a video for one class while filling out an assignment for another. Although initially promising, this approach made it very difficult for future reference when I needed to retain the information that was mentioned in the video.

Throughout my high school career I have attempted to implement a variety of strategies to improve my GPA to make myself stand out for colleges. I found that using a planner and making use of your teacher’s office hours were by far the most effective. On the other hand I experimented with multitasking which ended up hurting my grades. Ultimately, it is important to make an effort in implementing different strategies to improve your lifestyle and academic performance.