Sophomore year is your first call to the rude awakening of Carnegie Vanguard- and you have no choice but to pick up. Your Sophomore year at CVHS forces you to resort to tactics and routines that you’ve only heard about on documentaries of Harvard or Yale grad students.
Are you nervous? You should be.
Luckily for you, these 5 tips are going to ensure you get a 5 on your sophomore year without absolutely losing your mind and threatening to transfer once a week.
Tip #1: Totally Normal Studying Habits
In order to achieve the greatest success in your tenth grade year, it is recommended you spend a minimum of 168 hours studying for your next exam. This will achieve you the bare minimum of a 70% on your RAs for World History or your 89 questioned tests for English.
Sleep?- forget about it.
During these 168 hours, you must also tackle the everyday busy-work homework that will in no way, shape or form have anything to do with what will be on the test. If you get lucky, your teacher may cover what will be on the test the day before you take it then you will realize that what you’ve been studying was a completely different unit.
Unlike Freshman year, you CANNOT wait until the period before your test to cram or finish notes for a quiz like you would’ve for Pre-AP Biology. You must give yourself time to rethink your whole life as soon as you open up canvas to start an assignment (you may not think so, but this is an everyday occurrence).
The day of the test, take a deep breath and walk into class confident in knowing you most likely will still fail because your teacher found out someone cheated and made the test twenty times harder.
Tip #2: HEIMLER.
HEIMLER. HEIMLER. HEIMLER.
This man will be the holy grail to your sophomore year. If you’ve been at CVHS long enough, once every few weeks you will see the ENTIRE ( and no I’m not exaggerating- literally everyone ) sophomore class watching Heimler WHAP videos the majority of the lunch period. The ones that don’t have their laptops out either are absolute gods and studied ahead of time or they have accepted their fate.
Both AP World teachers let us know way ahead of time when a unit test will be scheduled for, but do we really look at the incredibly oversized whiteboard enough to remember? As CVHS Sophomores we sometimes forget the school we are at and choose to feed into the temptations of procrastination.
No worries though, Heimler’s History has got us- no doubt.
With his intensely fast speaking, bald head and unbearably corny jokes he has been able to sum up five weeks of AP World content into a playlist of 26 videos. Some of the highly motivated sophomores even choose to take one for the team and buy the WHAP study guide that Heimler never fails to mention in any of his content videos.
Always remember that no matter how much you study for the tests in AP World, there is a bigger issue that will face you once you start the test. This big obstacle is called, “ 40 minutes to answer 40 questions that will carry 2 paragraphs of stimulus you must read multiple times to even remotely understand”. Again, don’t stress too much because once you leave class you will forget everything you were just tested on in the span of 30 seconds.
Tip #3: “So hey did you do the math homework”?
In your sophomore year, you will repeat this sentence at least three times a week. If you’re not repeating these eight words, then you are most likely being asked them ( trust me, you do not want to be the one being asked this question ). You may be thinking, “why not just do it at home”, but quite frankly completing 22 questions of homework on a topic that you spent almost two hours learning is the most unappealing thought you could possibly have.
Usually many Sophomores are taking Algebra 2, Geometry or Pre-Cal while there are a few students that take two different 5.0 math classes at the same time- nobody knows how these people are still sane but they make it work.
As someone who is in Pre-Cal at CVHS, I am not kidding when I say you WILL have homework after every class. The day that Ms. Ramon doesn’t assign homework, you will know something is seriously wrong with the cosmos.
Given that many classes at CVHS assign quizzes or tests every other week or even every week, you must reach into the depths of your soul to complete your math homework.
If you choose not to though… that’s where our special sentence comes into play.
Tip #4: Timings of the U.T Quest
U.T Quest: The hardest part of chemistry. ( only if you have Mr. A though)
U.T Quest assignments will typically open up two weeks in advance and if you’re feeling studious then you will attempt to start the night it opens. You will open up the 42 questioned web assignment and lose any spark of motivation you thought you had.
Give it another few days and your chem teacher will most likely give you the long block period to work on this assignment. Will you actually spend the time doing the U.T Quest? That is partially up to who you have as a teacher and if you don’t know what that means… you will.
There is a very special component about the U.T quest which is the fact that all the questions will be 786% harder than the actual test over the unit. That means you will spend more time finding the answers to the questions on a quizlet rather than attempting to study for the test
itself.
Hint: If you do not see yourself getting a 100% on the unit test, DO NOT coincidentally get 100% accuracy on the U.T Quest
When attempting to tackle the U.T Quest remember that there is no perfect way to time the completion because you will most likely end up waiting until the day its due and storm into Mr. A or Garcia’s room ( usually A ) and ask for an extension once the answer key comes out.
Tip #5: Junior Year
Many students at CVHS tend to leave before their sophomore year. Those that stay… most likely didn’t get the option to leave. You may wonder why people choose to leave the glorious institution of Carnegie Vanguard High School and there is no clear answer ( yes there is but we will definitely not be elaborating on those right now ).
As sophomores go through phases of stress and struggle at school, you may think that many turn to teachers for words of advice and wisdom.
You thought wrong.
If you get lucky, some teachers may listen and offer forms of advice but 99.9999% of the time they will hit you with their favorite phrase, “ Junior year won’t get any better”. This simply means that you shouldn’t really have time to worry about the year that you’re in because at least you’re not taking 5-7 APs.
Those .0001% of teachers that try to ease your mind are heaven-sent. Now this doesn’t mean that the other teachers don’t really care about your feelings. Majority of the teachers here do the best they can to guide you but sometimes they need to place students in a reality check, especially sophomores.
So to recap this tip: no matter how overwhelmed you think you might be, there will be a junior getting a maximum 45 minutes of sleep after having to complete 16 different assignments for just one of their classes.
The Secret Tip:
Now that I’ve given you the five ways that many sophomores have survived and are surviving their 10th grade year, there is one secret tip that many are hesitant to share.
The best tip to get through ANY year at CVHS is to simply let it go.
Some nights you need to forget about the edpuzzles and papers to refresh your mind in order to do it all over again tomorrow. Now I’m not saying to simply not do the work but to give yourself time to do what makes you whole and sane ( oh and don’t procrastinate ).
With these tips plus the secret tip you will be insured a 5 on your sophomore year.
