My Love Letter To All Lowerclassmen
By Briana Argarate, Senior, iPreparatory Academy

Dear Lowerclassmen,
​
This is my love letter to you. The purpose of this letter is to express my concerns and guide you through very difficult times by providing advice on three important things that play vital roles in your future. Times are very difficult right now, without a doubt, and my main advice is for you to remain focused on building your future and expanding your knowledge.

Nicole McMurray / Colorado State University

Knowledge is Power:
As you transition through highschool, your knowledge builds on from year to year and begins to overlap. This is why it is important to absorb as much knowledge as you can and really ingrain everything being taught to you into your head. High school is not memorization, but it is understanding the ideas being presented to you to another level. Therefore, in order to understand what you will be learning you need to begin to pay attention and focus on the concepts being taught to you. Learning and comprehending is also beneficial to know what you are most invested and interested in, which can play a big role in choosing what you want to study when you graduate high school. Additionally, freshman year should be the year you begin to join clubs and actively participate in extracurriculars because it allows you to be involved and will present more opportunities to you when you are applying to colleges. I stress this advice to you because the school system is made to build upon every year in the sense that what you learn one year is supposed to be the foundation to what you will learn the year after.  Not only will your mind appreciate your academic consistency, but also colleges will.

Cheaters never win:
Instead of choosing to learn and take accountability for their schoolwork, some students take the other route and begin to cheat their way through highschool. According to popular belief, many view cheating as a way to maintain your grades and do not reflect on the irresponsibility of cheating. Copying answers and looking things up during exams and on homework assignments may be a temporary fix for your grades, but it can be detrimental to passing classes at the end of the year. If you procrastinate and demonstrate no effort to learn the concepts being taught, then you will not have the ability to pass the end of year of exams that ultimately determine if you pass and receive credits for those classes. On top of putting at risk your credits, consistent cheating will cause yourself to create bad habits that are not easy to get rid of. 

Your GPA will catch up to you and nip you in the bud:
Personally, I have been very committed in keeping my GPA as high as possible. IN order to do so, I have worked consistently and hard to learn everything introduced to me and apply it to all of my assignments, exams, and projects. However, my most regrettable mistake is slacking in the beginning of my high school years (freshman and sophomore year). If I had applied myself the way I do now, I would have been able to graduate with a higher GPA than I will now. I would hate for you guys to feel the regret that I, along with other seniors that I know, have been feeling lately, which is why my last advice to you is to work hard every single year, especially your freshman year. This is because freshman year creates the foundation of your GPA and having a strong foundation will benefit you in the long run. If you start off with a higher GPA, it is easier to maintain than a low one due to the fact that it is evidently more difficult to raise your GPA once it is low. 

High school goes by very quickly. Many view high school as a waste of time, abundances of work, and something which places unnecessary stress upon a student. However, high school is about finding yourself and what you want to do with your life. This does not necessarily mean a career, but it can be about creating goals, finding out what you are interested in learning more about, or how you want to feel when you grow up. Additionally, an important point I want to make is that grades are important, but they do not define you. You are defined by the effort you put into everything you do, by your dedication, and by persistence. In sum, I encourage you to keep in mind the three pieces of advice I have explained throughout my love letter to you in order to efficiently progress through these next couple years of your life.

by Iconspng

Love,
Briana A.