Article: There are many websites that will help you get by in school by giving you the most important information that most often shows up on tests. Sparknotes, for example, is a well-known study aid that summarizes books for students who either haven’t read the book at all, or who need help understanding major themes and concepts. They also provide study aids for non-literary subjects, from chemistry to computer science.  Read the summaries of assigned books so your teacher won’t be able to tell if you didn’t finish the whole reading. Use the aids to help you formulate the points of your papers. Make sure to read the aids carefully. If you haven’t been paying attention in class, you might misunderstand a point and make a very obvious mistake on your paper or test. Do not plagiarize from these study aids. At the beginning of the year, take an hour to put together the organizational system that you’ll follow for the whole year. A tiny amount of work at the beginning will save you a lot of unnecessary headaches and work later.  Purchase a hole-puncher, a three-holed folder for each class, three-holed tab separators, and a large three-ring binder to hold all of your notes and documents for all your classes for the year. Make sure the binder is thick enough to house all the materials you’ll gather over the year. Use the tab separators to create a section for each class. Your binder should move chronologically through your schedule: your first class comes first, and your last class comes last. Put a labeled folder for each class in the corresponding section of the binder. Put clean paper in the very front of the binder to take notes. At the end of every class, before you pack up, move your notes to the appropriate section, making sure to keep them in chronological order. Use your three-hole punch on handouts, and place them in their correct chronological order as well, so all the information on a given subject is in the same place within each section. Use your folder for documents that can’t be hole-punched — for example, if there’s important information in the margins that you don’t want to ruin with a hole. If you know that one history teacher is a harsher grader than the other history teacher, talk to your guidance counselor about getting into the easy grader’s class. Of course, don’t say that you want the easier grade; instead, say that you learn better from that teacher’s instruction style. Explain that you think you’ll get more out of the class if you’re with the right teacher. The school might not let you switch classes, but if it does, you'll have saved yourself a whole year of hard work and bad grades. Although it’s not the only thing colleges look at, your GPA is very important if you want to get into a good university. Keep in mind, though, that college admissions offices take into consideration the difficulty of your class schedule when looking at your application. Because of that, you can’t just load your schedule with easy classes; you have to be smart about which easy classes to take.  If you’re naturally gifted in a subject, go ahead and try to take an honors class in that subject. If you need a subject specifically for your aspirations — biology because you want to be a doctor, for example, and you plan on writing about it in your college entrance essays — don’t take an easy section. However, if you’re terrible at something, and it’s not part of your dream career, then don’t be ashamed to take an easier class in that area. You’ll be able to tell college admissions officers about the rigor of your other classes, and you won’t bring your GPA down by taking a class you can’t handle. This way, you have time to finish homework during the hours when you have to be in school anyway. By scheduling it at the end of the day, you know that you’ve received all of your assignments from that day, so you can push yourself to finish all of your work before leaving school. When school gets out, you can just enjoy the rest of your day and not have to think about work anymore!

What is a summary?
Use study aids. Create an organizational system for paperwork. Choose your teachers wisely. Enroll in easy classes when necessary. Enroll in a study hall at the end of the school day.