The best answer I can give to this question is it depends.
It depends on what classes you choose to take, how well you can plan and how much self-discipline you have. For example if you choose easy classes, you are able to plan and discipline yourself fairly easily then cyber school should be a piece of cake for you. On the flip side if you choose tough classes, have a hard time focusing and have trouble disciplining yourself then cyber school could possibly be harder than public school for you.
So lets take a look at the first factor, the classes you choose. I'm almost certain that it is universal that the hard classes tend to be Science, Math and English. I know that I personally struggle in Science because my mind just doesn't process the information very well, but I also know a lot of friends who every Math problem feels like guessing the end of a M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Sadly it is a requirement to take all three of those courses including history each year, so I guess Science and I are going to have to get over our differences and work it out. Still you can choose between honors and regular CP courses to allow yourself do-able work that will still challenge you, but also won't cause you to feel the need to pull out your hair.
I did this with Science this year. I'm one of those kids who would take most honors course I could, except for English because I had heard from inside sources that it was incredibly difficult, and only writing. So yes, I took honors Chemistry last year. That was one of those courses that I just barely passed with an 'A', but feel like I should have gotten a 'D' because I hardly ever understood what we were doing. This then led me to decide to take Environmental Science which is the random easy Science course because I had finally figured out that I was going into ministry, a job that doesn't require a whole lot of science beyond the point of Biology.
Other easy classes I've found are Health and Sociology. Health is required, but only a semester long, and then it turns to Fitness. Honestly, I could probably finish all three units of Health in about five hours, which is not a lot seeing as we have about two months to finish it. Sociology is like a half a step up from Health difficulty wise, but still incredibly easy. Sociology is one of my elective classes, which brings me to my next point.
Along with the difficulty level of classes, you must also factor in the amount of classes you have. At my cyber school the Maximum I am allowed to have is six courses at a time. Some of them are only broken into semesters, like Heath and Fitness.
Sometimes having three hard classes is about the same as having about eight easy classes to balance.
The next factor is your ability to plan. This one is much more self explanatory. Time becomes yours to dictate, and you must do it efficiently and make it manageable. If you cannot plan, then you can get stuck in bad situations where you have too much work for only a small amount of time or forget to do things resulting in bad grades or attendance.
When I first started cyber school my plan was to finish each course in one week. I would work strait through that course, and then go on to the next one. Of course my plan quickly went downhill when I discovered that I had missed some assignments due in my AP Psychology class, and that the easy courses that only took an hour a day while my hard classes could take up to four or five.
So I had to thoughtfully plan out the rest of my marking period, and have almost successfully finished marking period one early. A good way to judge your self-discipline is by your ability to finish homework and chores each day. If you have trouble with both of these, then I would recommend that you take more time to think about cyber school.
It depends on what classes you choose to take, how well you can plan and how much self-discipline you have. For example if you choose easy classes, you are able to plan and discipline yourself fairly easily then cyber school should be a piece of cake for you. On the flip side if you choose tough classes, have a hard time focusing and have trouble disciplining yourself then cyber school could possibly be harder than public school for you.
So lets take a look at the first factor, the classes you choose. I'm almost certain that it is universal that the hard classes tend to be Science, Math and English. I know that I personally struggle in Science because my mind just doesn't process the information very well, but I also know a lot of friends who every Math problem feels like guessing the end of a M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Sadly it is a requirement to take all three of those courses including history each year, so I guess Science and I are going to have to get over our differences and work it out. Still you can choose between honors and regular CP courses to allow yourself do-able work that will still challenge you, but also won't cause you to feel the need to pull out your hair.
I did this with Science this year. I'm one of those kids who would take most honors course I could, except for English because I had heard from inside sources that it was incredibly difficult, and only writing. So yes, I took honors Chemistry last year. That was one of those courses that I just barely passed with an 'A', but feel like I should have gotten a 'D' because I hardly ever understood what we were doing. This then led me to decide to take Environmental Science which is the random easy Science course because I had finally figured out that I was going into ministry, a job that doesn't require a whole lot of science beyond the point of Biology.
Other easy classes I've found are Health and Sociology. Health is required, but only a semester long, and then it turns to Fitness. Honestly, I could probably finish all three units of Health in about five hours, which is not a lot seeing as we have about two months to finish it. Sociology is like a half a step up from Health difficulty wise, but still incredibly easy. Sociology is one of my elective classes, which brings me to my next point.
Along with the difficulty level of classes, you must also factor in the amount of classes you have. At my cyber school the Maximum I am allowed to have is six courses at a time. Some of them are only broken into semesters, like Heath and Fitness.
Sometimes having three hard classes is about the same as having about eight easy classes to balance.
The next factor is your ability to plan. This one is much more self explanatory. Time becomes yours to dictate, and you must do it efficiently and make it manageable. If you cannot plan, then you can get stuck in bad situations where you have too much work for only a small amount of time or forget to do things resulting in bad grades or attendance.
When I first started cyber school my plan was to finish each course in one week. I would work strait through that course, and then go on to the next one. Of course my plan quickly went downhill when I discovered that I had missed some assignments due in my AP Psychology class, and that the easy courses that only took an hour a day while my hard classes could take up to four or five.
So I had to thoughtfully plan out the rest of my marking period, and have almost successfully finished marking period one early. A good way to judge your self-discipline is by your ability to finish homework and chores each day. If you have trouble with both of these, then I would recommend that you take more time to think about cyber school.
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