On September 16, SHSID’s 9th graders attended their third gateway course designed to help them adjust to high-school life. This session’s topics were time management and stress management, which were fitting since high school has more rigorous courses and assignments.

Ms. Chen Lin started off with the lecture on time management. To summarize, there are two main techniques she introduced to help with time management. The first one is time matching, used to divide and categorize one’s tasks into different levels of urgency to make sure one can do the right tasks at the right time. The second one is the Pomodoro technique; it calls for 25 minutes of continuous and productive work followed by a 5-minute break. This can be repeated four times, and then it is suggested to take a longer break. Additionally, task boards, checklists, and to-do lists, can help with time management as well. A more unheard-of version of a to-do list is a stop-doing list, which, as the name suggests, is a list of things one should not do while studying to maximize the usage of time.

Moving on, the second part of the course was stress management. Ms. Sloan explained that stress can be caused by various variables like homework, exams, pressure from parents, uncertainty about the future, negative thoughts about oneself, family problems, and/or procrastination. It is important to identify the source of stress, and a person needs to actually try to reduce it. Some general techniques for stress management include meditating for a short period of time, reframing one’s thought process and structure, and/or speaking out about one’s troubles.

Overall, the course covered an abundance of useful techniques and solutions that will definitely help the ninth graders transition smoothly into high school.

(Written by 9(12) Angela Luo Pictures by 9(6) Vanessa Liu Supervised by Meijun Shi Reviewed by Qian Zuo)