Doing well in high school prepares students for life in college and beyond, so achieving student success is important. High school students learn valuable information from class lectures and homework, and by asking for help when it is needed. Being prepared for tests and engaging in school activities can help a student to achieve success in high school.

    Complete any homework you are assigned on time. Then, if you need help understanding a concept you will have plenty of time to get help.

    Create a study area in your home. This can be a quiet bench outside or a seating area in your room. If you like to listen to music while studying, listen to classical or relaxing music. Be sure to have plenty of lighting in the area to read your textbook or notes.

    Keep a schedule. If you have extra-curricular activities like sports or school meetings, make sure to schedule your homework and study time around them. Keeping a schedule will allow you to get better grades while they are having fun in high school.

    Eat breakfast. Having breakfast each morning before school will give you energy and brain function to pay better attention in class. Eat snacks during study sessions to keep alert and focused on your work.

    Create a study group to help fellow high school students and get help if you need it. Studying with others will help reinforce concepts and information, and if you need help there will always be someone there to help you before you get behind in your studies.

    Set up after-school hours with your teacher if you need extra tutoring. Visiting a teacher for one-on-one time before a test will help you nail down those last few concepts you need help with.

    According to sociologists(社会学家), every modern industrial society has some form of social stratification(阶层). Class, power and status are important in deciding people's rank in society.

    Class means a person's economic position in society. A commonly used classification is lower class, middle class and upper class. While sociologists disagree on how these terms should be exactly defined, they do describe societies like the United States quite well. One study shows that 53% of Americans belong to the lower class, 46% the middle class, and 1% the upper class. Interestingly, a surgeon earning $500,000 a year and a bus driver earning $50,000 a year both regard themselves as the middle class!

    Power refers to the amount of control a person has over other people. Obviously, people in positions of great power (such as governors) exercise(行使)big power, but people who take orders from others have less power. Power and class do not always go hand in hand, however. For example, the governor of a state has great power, but he or she may not belong to a corresponding (相应的)economic class. Generally, however, there is a relationship between power and class. To our knowledge, there aren't too many people who aren't millionaires in the U．S. Senate!

    Status is the honor or respect attached to a person's position in society. It can also be affected by power and class, but not necessarily so. For example, a university professor may have a high status but not belong to a high social class or have a lot of power over others.

    Children who spend more time reading with their parents have a greater chance of becoming better readers than those who don't. With the help from their parents, children can learn techniques to improve their reading skills.

    "A lot of parents think after their child learns to read, they should stop reading to them," Donna George said. "They are sadly mistaken."

    George offers her services to parents at the Title I Learning Centers. She said reading aloud to children may be the most valuable thing parents can do. "It is better for children to hear things at a higher level than where they are," George said. "Parents are their child's first teacher." Parents help their children build listening, phonics, comprehension and vocabulary skills when they read aloud to them.

    Before parents can identify reading problems, they should escape the enemy —television and limit the time their children spend watching television. George suggested not allowing kids to have a TV in their bedrooms, setting a schedule of when kids can watch or keeping a list of how many programs children watch. Louise Joines said while her 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son enjoy reading, the television sometimes becomes a distraction. So she tries to build the situation by suggesting books the entire family will enjoy reading together, like the Harry Potter series.

    Parents who do not read themselves should not count on their children being interested in it. If parents would read to their children at least 15 minutes every day, children would not have so many problems in school. It is the parents' job to help build that desire in their children, and of course to know what kind of books to read is also important.

    One silly question I simply can't stand is "How do you feel? Usually the question is asked of a man in action — a man on the go, walking along the street, or busily working at his desk. So what do you expect him to say? He'll probably say, "Fine, I'm all right," but "you've put a bug in his ear" — maybe now he's not sure. If you're a good friend, you may have seen something in his face, or his walk, that he overlooked that morning. It starts him worrying a little. First thing you know, he looks in a mirror to see if everything is all right, while you go merrily on your way asking someone else, "How do you feel?" Every question has its time and place. It's perfectly acceptable, for instance, to ask "How do you feel?" if you're visiting a close friend in the hospital. But if the fellow is walking on both legs, hurrying to catch a train, or sitting at his desk working, it's no time to ask him that silly question. When George Bernard Shaw, the famous writer of plays, was in his eighties, someone asked him, "How do you feel?" Shaw put him in his place. "When you reach my age," Shaw said, "either you feel all right or you're dead."

    Long before iPhone, the cigarette was the companion of choice for restlessness. And long before Facebook and WeChat, it was tobacco that promised to better your social life. Now, quitting smartphones has become the new quitting smoking.

    Of course, technology does not yellow your teeth, cause disease or lead to cancer. But some individuals are so concerned that device addiction is damaging their mental health. In order to reduce their dependence, even in Silicon Valley, people are turning off the messages that constantly buzz for their attention, banning smartphones from the bedroom and, curiously, changing the colors on their screens to a less tempting scale of gray.

    The big tech companies will have to work out how to respond to this new generation of quitters. Facebook is the first to go public with its attempt, hoping its recent move can make the social network more homely.

Last year the tech industry got a bad name —Big Tech—with unfortunate echoes of other industries that have faced fierce opposition, including Big Tobacco. Like them, the tech industry has to reduce concern from a new generation of activist shareholders （股东） that are questioning its role in the world. These campaigns are never as fierce as those faced by Big Tobacco. In the 1990s, socially responsible investors refused to put money in tobacco stocks.

    It is far difficult for investors to challenge Big Tech and hard to separate the good these companies do in the world-connecting old friends and giving space for people to share their ideas-from the bad. In the meantime, stopping using technology remains problematic. In The World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, Franklin Foer argues that tech should be seen in a similar way to junk food: a convenience that some reject for more continuing nutrition.

    So we need to do more to turn the tide. In the same way that public service announcements made smoking around your children taboo （禁忌）, we can warn parents against losing themselves in their smartphones while taking care of kids. We can also create no-smartphone zones at dinner. Eventually smartphones could be banned from all public places and help us give our attention to the people around us instead.