As Tri 1 begins to come to a close, it’s important to maintain focus and maybe even dig a little deeper to do the best that you can in each class and in the finals that they present.

I recently asked AVID senior, Yao Dumenya, who’s also a Varsity Basketball Athlete how he manages to prepare for finals and keep his grades up.

I began by asking him how he does on his schoolwork and how he maintains good grades? I asked does he do good on tests and quizzes or does he tend to do good on formative assignments such as graded homework. I did this to make it relevant to young readers who could relate. He said, ” If I understand the homework, I understand the test, so doing homework helps with doing good with tests”.

I then asked him what advice would he give to high school students, his peers. He replied, “Take finals like it’s a regular test in class. People ask what percentage it’s worth and realize that if they fail, it won’t hurt their grade. It will, so don’t take finals for granted”. He said that message is for all grades in high school, it’s not specifically for freshman or juniors, it’s for everyone.

That being said, I then asked what’s his most effective study tactic and what helps him do better? He responded by saying, “Looking over what we did in class before doing the homework in order to refresh my memory of the work we did that day”.

To wrap things up, I finally questioned him by saying, “what has played a major role in your academic successes AND failures as well, because there’s always something that we can avoid to make us better learners. Dumenya told me, ” A major role in my academic successes are not procrastinating. Procrastination is a big failure I also had because being behind in school really affects the performance on how you do. As you’re doing that task at hand, you’re also thinking of what you have to finish that you could’ve finished when it was due”.

After listening to Yao’s comments and responses, I found good advice and gained good knowledge on how to finish the trimester as best as possible.