By Lauren Shin, Staff Writer
The third quarter has officially come to an end, marking the start of the last few months left in this school year. With refreshed mindsets, students are hoping to end the year strong with good grades and finals.
Students have mixed feelings when reflecting on the third quarter. Was this past quarter more stressful than the first semester? Some students believe so, while others do not.
The increased stress is partly due to the fact that finals and AP exams are coming up, as well as officer elections in clubs for the next school year.
Freshman Logan Ji shares that the third quarter was definitely more difficult for him compared to the first and second quarter: “I’ve never taken an AP exam in my life so I’m kind of worried I might fail it.” He refers to his AP Computer Science and AP Calculus classes, both of which he is going to take the AP Exam in.
It’s a given that courses get more challenging as the year progresses, but many students feel that the second semester has been drastically harder than the first semester.
Kayoung Kwon, a junior, shares how it is getting harder for her to juggle school with clubs and other extracurricular activities.
Kwon states, “I am in 4 clubs, and I’m on the officer team for 2 of them, so I have to work on applications to run again; I play cello in orchestra; I have to do homework and study for tests, as well as prepare for the SAT. APs and finals are coming up- there’s just so much going on at once and I feel like it definitely wasn’t this bad during the first semester.”
With the pressure of the end of the year approaching, students clearly seem to be overwhelmed with all their responsibilities.
Kayoung further elaborates ,“It’s hard to juggle everything because even though the end of the year is still kind of far away, everyone acts like it’s going to end soon. On top of school, there’s so much to do because everything just happened at the same time.”
Sophomore Lily Peng agrees, sharing how she “had to make up so many assignments for missing school for just two days. There’s just so much work even though the quarter literally just started.”
In addition to high school being tough in general, River Hill is especially known to be one of the most challenging schools due to its accelerated courses and competitive environment. Hopefully, though, all this hard work will pay off when students graduate and find themselves well-prepared for college.