When the phrase “junior year” is uttered, the first image that pops into many students’ heads is that of a student scribbling at 2 a.m., powered only by caffeine and a burning desire to get into college. As a result, during course selections, counselors and teachers alike emphasize taking fewer APs to spare students’ health.

One way to curb the “student-dies-then cries-over-APs” issue is to offer time management lessons or tutorial sessions to increase students’ ability to handle rigorous course loads.

In an ideal world, students would faithfully follow the administration’s advice to lighten the course load side, but the truth is that most students will continue to cram as many APs as they think is needed for college. And for their part, elite colleges will continue to select students who are taking AP-filled schedules over ones that have an easier course load.

Time management lesson plans could do wonders if they were offered to freshmen. By their junior and senior years, they would at least have better habits with study discipline and scheduling.  It is far better to prepare for hard times early on than during the actual onset of hardship. Junior year is a highly inconvenient time to realize that one’s old cramming and procrastination methods don’t work.

The skills these underclassmen would learn would last far beyond their high school years. While few students will remember the obscure African countries they studied in World Geography, having basic time management skills will come in handy in college, in the workplace and in just about every aspect of life.

If we can offer an elective course as specialized as guitar or American Sign Language, then we can well afford to give students some education on time management that would actually be applicable to school work itself — something every student will run into.

In order to maximize such an offering’s impact, the school should either incorporate more time management lessons into one of the mandatory freshman classes or make it a bigger part of Falcon Focus.

The course could consist of different ways to study, take tests or even organize one’s binders. It would also give students practice in creating and adhering to daily schedules, in preparation for busier times when obligations are too numerous to keep track of.  The whole goal would be to teach students to work as efficiently as possible.

With better time management, students will be able to better handle their AP classes.