In almost every high school across the nation there are honors classes available, but what students take advantage of these classes? What makes these students different from the ordinary students?

Heart and backbone.

Heart and backbone are two very different things. Heart is a love for the subject. Whereas backbone, or perseverance, is having the drive to complete something even when it is extremely difficult, like AP English. In the beginning of the year I had no idea how I was going to be able to finish out the year. It was difficult compared to last year’s English class. It was definitely harder, but that is what makes it an advanced placement class. I think it helped that I love English and I love writing and reading, although I am not so good at writing essays the first time around. I had the heart and backbone (perseverance) to get through to the fourth quarter. This made me feel accomplished that I stuck it out till the end which could actually be an attribute in an honors student. Honors students feel accomplished when they work hard and push through the challenges.

Being able to push through challenges is what differentiates between an honors student and an ordinary student. Ordinary students tend to just give up if they do not understand something. But I must admit I do this a lot when I ask my dad for math help, it’s just so frustrating at times. Along with giving up, ordinary students procrastinate and when they put it off till the last second they do not do as good of a job as they would of if they had done it ahead of time and given themselves plenty of time. This discourages them and they lose the heart for the subject.

Without heart honors students would not be able to complete their honors classes. To complete the class, you must have a love for the subject and the push to continue and persevere when a student wants to give up. You know when you’re in love when you see the person and your heart starts beating really fast and you get butterflies in your stomach. You start to sweat and get nervous and fidgety. You are excited to see the person every day. This should happen when you walk into your honors class every day, not saying that there won’t be days you dread walking into the classroom. For me personally I love walking into my AP psychology and AP English class. AP Psych is really exciting to me, and my teacher is really funny and makes the class even better. And just the fact I love English and the challenges makes it even that more exciting for me to walk into 8th period every day. For me, AP English was a jump I took off a cliff into the open air. I pushed myself off that cliff having faith I would land safely.

Honors students know when to push themselves to take an honors class and when not to. They know when they will be challenged in a good way and when they will be challenged in a bad way. An honors student knows the risk of taking the honors class and the hard work he/she will have to put in to finish the course.

For example, say you want to take the course AP Psychology but you know psychology is not the career you want to go into and you know from other sources that the class AP Psychology is extremely hard, would you choose to still take it?

Some students would just so that they have an AP class to put down or to get the extra point on his/her GPA. They would find the class very hard and would most likely slack off and not do all the work required to get a good grade in the class, because honestly they do not care.

Honors students also procrastinate, a lot more than they probably should. I know I do it. I always say I will give myself plenty of time but then I find myself scrambling at the last second to get all the work that has piled up done. This happened to me a lot last year and I have learned a little, but I still procrastinate on some things, like reading. But with other things, like writing a paper, I try to give myself at least two days, which is still not a good amount of time but it is more than I gave myself last year. It doesn’t help that when I do putt off things I end up either staying up late or getting to school early to finish them so then I lose sleep and get sick and lose concentration, which overall is not a good thing. But there is one thing honors students do well…

They dedicate themselves to the class. They work hard. They stay up late to finish their homework. They try their hardest to do their best. Yes, they do complain, a lot, but that comes with the role of playing an honors student. They may complain but they know in the end they will get it done and they will accomplish the challenge and push through it and over the mountain.

Overall honors students WANT to be in the class, they CHOOSE the class, and most likely have a love/hate relationship with the class where the love always perseveres.