With all the tests high schoolers have to take, studying is a very important thing to do. However, some students are either studying at the eleventh hour or not studying at all. This often leads to lower scores and grades that could lose your permission to attend events or even force you to repeat that class. Studying prevents this from happening.

In an article posted by the Harvard Summer School Program, one of the recommendations given was planning what you were going to study beforehand and keeping it. Creating and sticking to a plan on what you will study makes the process easier to execute. Jessie Schwab, a psychologist brought on for that article, states “Set yourself a study schedule ahead of time and stick to it.” This makes studying feel less crammed and makes you feel more in control of your time.

One thing you can try to include in your plan is practicing similar problems to ones you have seen before. In a publication by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill), they recommend reworking math and economic problems to help you understand and explain the steps to completing them. Even if you don’t know the steps, you will at the very least get a solution to the problem.

Another idea brought up by UNC Chapel Hill is to avoid multitasking! Things like your phone are common distractions but also studying multiple subjects at once can get overwhelming. Instead of tackling all classes in one period, try breaking it up into one or two manageable classes over many periods. By doing this, you study less classes every day, but you can study more within the classes you chose to study.

One last recommendation that will be given here is an easy, but often overlooked, tip: ask your teachers for help! There are “lab days” for many classes to help you not only understand topics you’re struggling in, but also boosting your grades in the process. If your teacher doesn’t have one of these days, you can still ask them during class for help during working time. Most teachers would be willing to lend you a hand when you need it. They all want you to see your excellent grade when you receive the grade for the finals.