Sophomore Robert Reiss has worked hard this semester to work a part-time job as a lifeguard, sing in the morning choir, and play the piano, all while maintaining a GPA of 3.96 so far this semester.

Reiss’ sophomore year has been a step up academically, and he has pushed himself to take much harder classes than his freshman year.

He is currently taking four AP or Honors classes, which include Honors English II, Honors Biology, AP World History, and Honors Algebra II.

“I would recommend taking the amount of hard classes I take, but only if you can fit it into your schedule and balance it with other events going on in your life,” Reiss said. “Every person is going to have a different amount of schoolwork that they can handle, while [also] balancing extracurriculars and other things in their lives.”

His favorite class this year has been Honors English II with Mr. Dreisbach because “Mr. Dreisbach is a… fun and charismatic teacher and we get a chance to have discussions in class and explore different types of ideas and different types of literature,” he said. “It’s an overall great environment and good class.”

Reiss is in his second year of French, something that comes a bit easier to him as this is his third language. He has been speaking both Russian and English since he was young.

“Since I grew up bilingual, it has been easier to begin learning French, since my brain is already hardwired to switch between languages, like how I switch between Russian and English,” Reiss said.

Reiss said his most challenging class this year has been AP World History. “The transfer from regular class to AP class has been a big shift and it’s been quite the experience learning to navigate the AP system and study in a much different way than in regular classes,” he said.

With lifeguarding as a part-time job and participating in morning choir, Reiss often finds himself with a small amount of time to keep up with his classes, and he said that balancing his social life, his job, and his schoolwork has been the most difficult part of this year.

To stay on top of his work, Reiss said, “I try to make a list and prioritize what I need to do and I set time limits for myself and set little goals to make sure I stay on track and don’t procrastinate.”

Next year he hopes to push himself even more by taking five AP or Honors classes, and has forecasted to take AP U.S. History, AP English III, AP Calculus AB, Honors French III, and Honors Chemistry.

To prepare himself for the increased workload next year, Reiss is going to “read ahead for certain classes, do work for those classes ahead of time… and keep an organized schedule.”

With this impressive resume, Reiss hopes to get into a good college and minor in philosophy and go into either pre-law or finance, but he is not fully committed to any one of these careers yet.

Reiss has two goals for the rest of the year: to score a 4 or a 5 on the AP World History test and to finish finals with all A’s.

Reiss’ advice for anyone struggling to balance school and extracurriculars, is to try to plan everything out.

“The biggest thing [that happens] is students can go and get overwhelmed when they see a bunch of assignments [and] they seemingly can’t [keep] track of it,” he said. “So just write down all that you have to do and try to do things ahead of time if you can… and try to prioritize.”