No, slackers, I'm not talking about effort level. I'm talking about minimum credits.
All of my school career, I have gone to excel advanced, honors and Advanced Prep classes to prepare for college. In the third grade, I was separated from a bunch of my friends and thrown into a classroom with a bunch of different other kids. We were told we would have special learning that was "more advanced." This is where we started to overachieve.
I loved excel, we went to field trips, learned introductory Spanish, which was a big deal for my middle school and even got to have special benefits when it came to picking classes. We could now choose honors classes over regular college prep or general education classes.
We were like little quizzing bots of smarts that got all A's and never missed an assignment, even though we were loading ourselves down with mountains of work.
High school honors and AP classes were a bit harder, as our US History AP class ended up being a lot of work and every night and included major assignments that we stressed over for weeks. But we pushed through, adding on Calculus, Trigonometry, Biology and many many others. We barely had any time to cater to our physical needs.
We crammed AP and honors classes into our schedule for a reason, though. We wanted to get ahead in college. We got as many transferable credits from high school as we could, gaining a mere three to an impressive fifteen credits and some already kick-starting themselves into their sophomore and junior year.
I, however, didn't want to do this. I wanted to gain credit hours but I didn't want that to mean I had to jump into sophomore or junior year. For me, college is an essential experience you must go through as a young individual.
I only got six credits when I entered college. As soon as I could pick my classes I start cramming seventeen hours into my fall schedule. I thought to myself,"I can do this. I overwhelmed myself in high school and it turned out okay." I quickly realized I was wrong, and that seventeen hours for my first semester was a bit too much. I could've stayed in my bio class that I was bound to fail, but I dropped it and sunk down to thirteen hours that semester.
I was worried because I had always heard of my friends taking more than fifteen. I didn't know if taking just thirteen was okay, but, honestly, it helped me out tremendously in the long run. I had more time to transition into school and had more time to really focus on each of my classes.
It is okay to take the minimum amount of classes or a number close to it. As long as you are classified as a full time student, you are safe. You don't have to load yourself down to hopefully jump ahead a few credits. College is already hard enough as it is worrying about extracurricular activities, finances and grades. Don't make it harder by putting too much on your plate.
