Don’t Be a Bum; Challenge Yourself

You’ve probably heard this dozens of times, but try to challenge yourself with more difficult courses. While it’s probably a lot easier to skate through high school taking classes that are way below your skill level, there are no real benefits of doing so. Don’t sell yourself short. Take advantage of the opportunities your high school offers you.

Start preparing now.

Believe it or not, your future is going hit you well before you know it. You don’t want to be caught off guard without the tools you need to tackle the obstacles you’ll face. By taking courses that require you to exert more effort, you’ll learn how to manage your time better, overcome obstacles, and develop good study habits. These are important skills that are essential not only to academics, but to “real-life” situations as well. If you allow yourself to float through school without needing to think at all, then you will likely get your butt kicked when you run into a situation that is more difficult to handle than you expected. If you work hard now, life can be somewhat easier later.

Stimulate your mind.

Frequently, you will find people who are more passionate about excelling and fulfilling their potential in more challenging classes. If you surround yourself with these types of people, you will likely be encouraged to explore your interests and achieve the goals you set for yourself. Honors or Advanced Placement (AP) courses typically delve further into a subject and demand that you think critically about the ideas you learn about. Therefore, you develop a greater understanding of the world around you and gain more insight into particular subjects – thus helping you determine exactly what your most prominent interests are.

Look more interesting.

Of course, the more rigorous your schedule appears to be in high school, the more dedicated of a student you seem to be. If you’re looking to pursue a higher education, admissions officers are interested in students who they feel are college caliber. They want to give the available spots to good students who will take advantage of what their school has to offer, so if your resume says you are someone who will rise to a challenge, then you are one-upping someone who did well only in easy classes. Obviously, you must do fairly well in your courses to appeal to admissions officers, but a pretty good grade in a challenging class looks better than a somewhat better grade in a low-level class.

You might even save time (and money) later.

If you’re looking to head off to a college or university, you might be able to be exempt from or get credit for certain requirements at the institution you will attend. Most schools offer credit or some sort of exchange for good scores on AP exams. This can save you time so that you don’t have to take introductory courses or some courses required by a general education core. You can save so much time that you might even be able to graduate early, thus saving you money as well. AP isn’t the only way to do this – if you do well in your challenging courses, AP or not, chances are you’ll do well on any placement exams your college makes you take. If you just take a certain number of years of a particular subject (foreign language, for instance), you may be exempt from that requirement in college. Even if these efforts don’t get you out of some courses later, you will mostly likely do very well in them.

I have only listed a few benefits of challenging yourself; you may discover other personal benefits that I wouldn’t even think of. The main idea is to use your time and opportunities in high school wisely. You never know what you’ll learn. So make good choices. Find out what level of difficulty is right for you, and keep pushing the limits. You may be surprised at how rewarding it may be.

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