Marieka Kaufman

Junior Marieka Kaufman is a part of the cross country team and volunteers at an assisted living facility. During the school week, she has cross country practice Monday through Friday for “a bit over an hour and a half,” she said. 

Of all four AP classes, Kaufman has taken on for her junior year, “calculus is the hardest, honestly,” she said.

Kaufman said that her homework load throughout the school week can vary and that it depends on the day. “Sometimes I can have an assignment in every single class, and other times maybe for the next day I only have like two assignments,” she said. 

And on the weekends, her homework load can also differ — sometimes she will only have about four assignments, other times “practically every class will have an assignment.” 

Despite her tightly packed schedule, including cross country, volunteer work, and school, “it’s not too bad,” Kaufman said in regard to her stress level. “For some reason, spring is where I really feel overwhelmed.

During the second week of her junior year, Kaufman said that she experienced a big amount of stress due to a combination of out-of-school commitments and tricky homework assignments. “I ended up staying up until like midnight and then woke up at five to keep working on the project before school,” she said.

From this experience, Kaufman learned that splitting up her time and working on something at night and then in the morning works best for her, instead of trying to get it all done late at night.

Some advice Kaufman has for the underclassmen at La Salle is “don’t do more than you know you can handle,” she said. She suggests that if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed, do not hesitate to talk to teachers and ask for help, because the teachers here at La Salle understand that homework can be overwhelming and that students have other things going on outside of school, she said.