New by Aisha

New by Aisha - January 2016 Scholarship Essay

As the world says goodbye to 2015, the sun rises on 2016. With the new year comes new opportunities and chances to fix mistakes from the past. For me, 2016 is the year that I start life out on my own in college. Before I get to that point, I have to focus myself on graduating high school. For the past 4 years, high school has been a roller coaster. My schedule has been filled with volleyball and basketball games and homework from my AP classes. This year, things are changing. The heavy load is lightening. One of my New Years resolutions is to manage my schedule better. It is very easy for me to take advantage of free time, and I end up doing nothing productive at all. Managing my free time will help me with the rest of my school year, and in college as well, because it will help my grades go up.
One of the things I plan on doing with my free time is studying more. After I finish my homework, I tend to just stop there. I don't try and study over the notes I took or complete extra problems. I go to my living room and watch tv until it is time for bed. This year, the laziness stops. In order for me to do better in school, I have to use the free time to study. My test scores are suffering because I don't know the information well enough. Planning study times will help me pass this final semester of high school with higher grades.
Another thing that I am going to do in my free time is to go to a quiet place with no distractions. I do most of my homework at home on the kitchen table. To the left of me there is the tv taunting me to come into the living room and watch it, and to the right is my sister laughing with my dad. The temptations to just quit and join in to the conversation or to go watch tv is very great. So instead, I plan on going to someplace quiet, l the library or my room, with no distractions. This also includes cutting off my electronic devices because they too are easy ways to get off track.
In conclusion, free time can be a very dangerous thing. Once an opportunity presents itself that allows you to do nothing at all, it becomes tempting to do absolutely nothing with that time. My New Years resolution to manage my free time will help me become a better student. By scheduling more study time and putting myself out of distracting situations, my grade point average will rise from a 3.5 to a 4.0 and free time won't be as tempting to do nothing.