Greetings! I’m Jethro Punzalan, a staff writer on the ERHS Raider and this is my advice column! If you have any questions to ask me (and the rest of The Raider staff) regarding a personal problem, please feel free to send them to my e-mail at [email protected] direct message my Twitter @RaiderJethro. You can post your name as anonymous or with your real name.

Dear Jethro,

How should I manage time to do after school activities and have time to do homework?

Sincerely, Stressed Out.

Dear Stressed Out,

I know exactly how you feel. I barely have any time to do my homework, let alone manage to attend all of my extracurricular activities. It gets overwhelming sometimes, but if you want to have a balanced academic life and social life, I have two suggestions for you.

1) Cut out the after-school activities you don’t really need

If you have an after-school activity for every day of the week, you definitely won’t have time to do your homework. Ask yourself: Do I really need to attend all of these activities? Think about the most important ones that you could possibly put on a resumé in the future (eg. Honor Society, Journalism, etc.). Keep attending the most important ones, and only go to the other activities if you have spare time.

2) Do your homework beforehand

If you have an assignment that isn’t due right away (like a project), then do it in advance so that when the time comes, you have free time to attend your extracurricular activities, and you won’t be stressed out because you didn’t procrastinate. You can also just do your homework during the activity, if nothing is really going on.

I hope my suggestions help!

-Jethro