So, I heard you’re in Honors Global right now. That was quite a brave choice on your part. In case you didn’t know already, I’ll tell you right now- it’s probably the hardest honors class a freshman can take. So if you’ve made it this far, congrats, you’re pretty smart! However, you’ve undeniably faced some struggles. Ok, fine. Maybe you’re a tryhard and find everything easy. But there are some specific Honors Global shenanigans that people don’t particularly like. So, let’s go through how to survive what I believe are the most challenging parts of this class. 

Columbus Packet

1. Break it upppp

On the first day of school, you’d expect to walk into class and maybe do some icebreakers. Wellll, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not the case. Instead, you’re handed the Universal Decleration of Human Rights that will never be protected (right Mr. Coates?) and a hefty, 40 page packet. My fellow procrastinators, I see you- you’ll want to cram this just like you did every other assignment, but I mean it this time- this thing is forty pages, and if you don’t want to pull an all nighter, just hear me out and do a few pages a night. 

2. Aesthetics

I don’t know about you, but I like having a nice color scheme for my highlighters. There are multiple things you’ll want to look for while annotating(key people, events, vocab, blah blah blah), so I suggest you use different colored highlighters. But please, please, please, don’t use poopy brown highlighters and neon yellow highlighters as your “nice color scheme”. You don’t want to hurt your teacher’s eyes, and if the assignment looks nice, you’ll feel more motivated to complete it. Trust me. 

3. Don’t highlight the whole page

Yeah, don’t be that guy. 

4. Don’t give up

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, but there will be days when you feel like giving up and scrolling on TikTok for the entire night- just keep going, remember, you wanna bring home that A+. The more you do today, the less you’ll have to do tomorrow. Plus, you’ll feel better about your work if you’re disciplined. You got this bro!

Research Projects

1. It’s not really about the page count, but it also kinda is

You may be thinking quality over quantity, and yeah, you’d rather have less pages that actually make sense than 40 pages of absolute crap, but the teachers expect you to have at least nine or ten pages. That may sound like a crazy amount, but at least it’s not forty, yk?

2. Use NoodleTools or Google Docs for works cited

Just do it. All you have to do is put in the links and write the author’s name, title, blah blah blah, and it formats the whole thing for you. Guaranteed A+ on the works cited section, which is one of the stupidest categories to lose points on.

Highlight info from each source

Do that kind of thing. It saves you so much time when you’re going back after a long night of research to put everything into NoodleTools. 

Presentations

1. Don’t ramble

Ik you might be tempted to say everythinggg you know about the Columbian Exchange to fill the time requirements, but please spare your class. 

2. Be the funny guy

No one wants to watch you be a walking textbook (the textbook already exists…we don’t need another one)! Act like you’re on a talk show. If you act like your topic is actually interesting, you’ll like it more, and your class will thank you when it comes up on the test. Aka. gaslight yourself into liking your topic.

3. PUT. INFO. ON. THE. SLIDES.

Don’t put 2 words on each slide. Your classmates will want to look back at the slides before the test, and they’ll love you even more if you put important info in the speaker notes. 

Tests

Review the millions of slideshows and RTNs, know how to WRITE CAUSES AND EFFECTS, compare and contrast, analyze political cartoons, etc. etc. I prayyy for you. 

I hope this survival guide has been somewhat helpful! Even though the list of difficult stuff in honors global may seem endless, I hope you enjoy the class!