BACK TO SCHOOL PREPARATION 


Good morning everyone! As you all know, school has started which means it’s the perfect time to start anew. So if you have something important you want to achieve this year such as becoming student council president or making a certain sports team, I suggest you listen up to my tips on how to be successful this school year. 



GRADES MATTER

While this is a super obvious one, you’d be surprised how many people don’t do this and expect to get somewhere. The most common excuse I hear from people my age is that “Grades don’t matter until high school” And they aren’t completely wrong but there’s one huge piece of information that they’re missing. Each grade builds up on the last, let me explain. Let’s say in grade 6 you’re learning about the number 10 and you decided it didn’t matter, so you ignored it. Now you’re in grade 9 and now everyone’s working on the number 40 and you’re completely lost. That’s because you felt taking a huge leap was better than taking the time to learn the steps you needed for that skill. 


Another thing you must not do is cheat on tests. I know that while you’re doing this you’re thinking you’re so sneaky and smart but in fact by doing that you may be the dumbest person in the room. It’s because you’re not absorbing the material, you’re just passing the class without knowing what was taught. At the end of the day, you’re just sabotaging yourself. Who knows: maybe that geometry test you cheated on is the same geometry you’re studying in college. 


There are tons of people in my class who do just this. There are days when homework is assigned, so when we get back to class, the teacher checks if we did it. And by checking, I mean looking at the numbers filled in and checking us off a list. If we didn’t finish it, we would get 5 minutes taken away from our Driday free time. I’m ashamed to admit that I got so many tallies for homework. For some weird reason, the majority of the class never got tallies for that which led me to believe I was some terrible student. Of course, that wasn’t the case and it turned out people were just putting in wrong answers so as to not get any tallies. Which is helpful to get out of trouble, but that definitely won’t help them in the near future. It’s obvious that if they understood the material they wouldn’t feel the need to put in fake answers. So rather than learn the material, they chose to ignore it. What you should do instead is admit when you forgot to work that way you’ll work harder to not forget and try better to understand it.



BE FRIENDLY TO OTHERS

Friendliness is something a lot of people struggle with because they either end up bottling up their emotions or become an absolute doormat. So let me get one thing cleared up, being friendly does not mean priding yourself in being a doormat or refusing to address someone’s wrong doings in the name of being on everyone’s good side. Bottling up one’s emotions is definitely not a healthier alternative since it basically involves you concealing your feelings in order to not cause problems in the relationship. This heavily blocks communication because now people won’t know your boundaries and what you feel comfortable with. This is in no way friendly, it’s honestly just being too scared to have communication in the relationship. To me, being friendly is not being a pushover which means not everyone has to like you so don’t beg for their friendship (please, have some standards.) You also definitely don’t need to be the cliche “you can put your head on my shoulder” type of person. Just don’t be mean, a lot of people tend to be mean in the face of gossip. if you end up in a conversation where people are gossiping about someone, try to avoid adding your input about the person. If anyone asks what you think about the person, try to respond with facts rather than opinions.

For example

Person A: So what do you think of Jane’s anger issues?
 (Answer that will get you in trouble) (Response A)

You: yeah it’s so annoying honestly she needs to get a life.

(Answer that will avoid conflict) (Response B)

You: I’ve talked to Jane and she’s a nice girl, it’s just her anger issues that are holding her back.

What person A asked is known as a loaded question which is basically a trap question to get info out of you. If you had answered with Response A it’s likely that Person A would have blabbed about it to someone getting you into trouble. With Response B you are addressing the problem rather than the person as a whole. Basically not using that one flaw to identify the person. (If that makes sense.)

This won’t work for everyone because some people can just be evil. So I suggest once again addressing the person’s behavior but this time tell them how you felt towards the behavior. ( not the person.) Or better yet, just shut up and avoid gossip altogether (I’m sure you have better things to do)

SHOW YOUR WORK

I know all of you reading have a skill or hobby so this school year you need to do everything in your power to promote yourself. I know you guys are shy because believe me, I was too but my mom insisted I show my writing talent to others. I reluctantly took a copy of The Seeker to school and showed both my principal and teacher the next day my work was stapled onto the classroom wall and my face was on the school’s facebook account. I suddenly had teachers congratulating me on my spectacular work. Now when they need someone to write for the school, who do you think they’re going to ask? This gal.

So whatever useful skill you have, show anyone you can that way you’ll be the first person they look to when they need help regarding your skill. The more people know the better. So sign up for anything you can to get you noticed.


I noticed a lot of artists hate it when people ask if they can draw them. I am an artist myself but i never understood the hatred for that because to me it meant that the person thought my work was amazing. I only ever got offended when the person refused to pay for my hard work. I now understand that some artists don’t want to be paid and like to draw for they’re enjoyment. Which is fine but if you do choose this route just know you’ll struggle with money because let me tell you art supplies are not cheap. So I really suggest selling a bit of your work (make sure you sign it and show others that way people know it’s yours.) That applies to any skill you can make money off of. 


CONCLUSION

Thank you all for reading and I hope you’ll continue to read my work. Have a great rest of the day!

SOCIALS

Youtube: K.V.A art

Facebook: Kossy Valerie Akaeze