By Maximillian, Hannah, Oliver, and Rheanna, Year 12, YCIS Shanghai’s Century Park Campus.

So, your days of living a blissful middle school life are coming to an end, and the time has come to prepare for high school. But how can you prepare? Well, for starters, you can take the advice of a few senior students who are finishing up Year 12. So, listen up as we impart our wealth of high school knowledge to you.

First and foremost, you need to be prepared for the amount of work that’s ahead of you. The adjustment to high school levels of homework can certainly be challenging, but the bottom line is that you need to be ready. Accept the fact that you’re going to have less free time and may have to stay up later just to finish the work you have to complete.

After you’ve prepared for the workload, start using a calendar or a planner, because staying organized is key. Write down due dates, test dates, and everything else you have to do. Once you see it all planned out in front of you, the tasks will not seem daunting. This way, you’re able to prioritise your time and distribute it according to the size of the task. Knowing when you have co-curricular activities and planning around that is also important, so you won’t find yourself running out of time to complete a task.

Make sure that you find something you like to do outside of studying – something that you really, really, like to do. It could be anything, like playing a sport or listening to music. And do it as often as you can, especially whenever you think something is getting tough or difficult to manage as it’s also important to take time to relax.

Finally, you must remember that failure is okay. This may sound cheesy, but failure is the opportunity to start again, but this time more intelligently. Learn from your mistakes, be open to criticism, and improve upon that. Leave your fixed mindset behind and adopt a growth mindset instead, it’ll help you in the long run.

Although high school might seem tough now, just know that everyone around you is also going through the same thing. To make things easier, take our advice: be prepared, stay organized, make time for leisure, and learn from failure. Before you know it, the four years of high school will be over, and then you’ll be heading off to college!