While most students wake up and get to class by 9 a.m., senior Emily Stell begins Wednesday and Friday mornings at 9:30 a.m., with breakfast and a trip to the gym. Afterward, she takes a quick shower and finishes some homework before getting ready to head to school — just as her classmates are beginning their lunch period.

Stell is one of many students who had at least one prep period during first semester. Despite the extra free time she has because of this, Stell has since filled one of her preps with another class.

“Now I have to get up quite a bit earlier, which is frustrating,” Stell said. “But on the bright side, it is second semester senior year, so it’s much easier. I have less to worry about.”

Junior Kavita Fulton, who also had two preps during last semester, picked up her second prep differently. By dropping her Spanish class early in the year, she gained a third period prep in addition to her seventh one, which gave her different circumstances compared to Stell.

“It gave me a little break,” Fulton said. “I had a lot of different things to do for my AP lang class, which is fourth period, so it was really helpful to just have that time in the beginning to just finish up reading or anything.”

In addition to her increased productivity, Fulton said she saw a reduction in her anxiety with extra preps.

“I definitely noticed that it helped me just have more time and feel less stressed,” Fulton said. “And for my AP classes, I had a lot more time to just finish stuff.”

Despite the positive results of an additional prep, Fulton said she regrets not taking more classes.

“It was a fun thing to have,” Fulton said. “I just wish I didn’t have it because I should have taken six classes.”

Unlike upperclassmen, many underclassmen typically take seven classes, including a PE period. Sophomore Alex Lungren, a rower for Norcal Crew, chooses one of the exceptions to the seven class norm: independent study, where she gets credit for PE by playing a sport not offered at Paly.

Since switching from PE to Independent Study, Lungren said she has found the prep period helpful in finishing work or relaxing.

“I can get home two hours early, get some work done before practice and then still make it in time,” Lungren said. “My practice starts at 4:30, so I can’t leave at 4:10. I think it’s very helpful for that.”

Sophomore Narnia Lo takes ballet to fulfill her requirements for independent study. Lo, who also has a fourth period prep, said she found there are many positives to her prep aside from making it to practice on time and getting out of PE.

“If there is a test the next day, it’s nice to just have that time to be able to prepare,” Lo said. “Or if you have friends with the same prep, you could just go to town and country and hang out for a bit.”

Despite the popularity of prep periods, some upperclassmen choose to fill their schedules with seven or, in rare cases, eight courses.

Junior Mayu Altekar-Okazaki has a full set of extracurricular activities outside of her rigorous classes. Aside from being an editor for the Paly Voice, Altekar-Okazaki also peer tutors, plays the piano, works at an internship and leads community outreach in Youth and Government.

Despite the multitude of time commitments, Altekar-Okazaki said her interests led her to fill her schedule to pair with her extracurriculars.

“Honestly, there’s a large diversity of classes at Paly, and I wanted to have the opportunity to take as many classes as I could because I’m interested in so many different things,” Altekar-Okazaki said.

In addition to satisfying her interests, Altekar-Okazaki has found that some of these classes have helped her understand concepts in related subjects.

“It’s also been really interesting to learn all these other things,” Altekar-Okazaki said. “Or to see the overlap between my courses and see how this one thing from math has helped me with this thing in stats or this thing from physics.”

Similarly, junior Ishaan Juyal, not only filled all seven periods in his schedule, but added an eighth period for after school choir. Juyal said, similarly to Altekar-Okazaki, he wanted to fill his schedule with his interests before the stress of senior year.

“I wanted to cover as much as I possibly could, especially since I know that senior year is going to be a bit of a nightmare,” Juyal said. “I wanted to have physics as something that I knew roughly about in case it came up, so my decision was, instead of a prep, I would just take regular Physics instead of Physics H to make sure that my schedule wasn’t completely a nightmare.”

Juyal said one of his strategies is to tackle his assignments as quickly as possible.

“So long as you do it immediately and don’t procrastinate that homework, it’s really easy to manage,” Juyal said. “Then it’s just about knowing which classes give you what types of homework, and how fast you need to do them to make sure that your work doesn’t pile up.”

Junior Meghana Konduri also takes seven classes at Paly, along with a Multivariable Calculus course at De Anza community college. Despite the increased workload, she said she’s glad she took them because they provide her with a fun learning experience.

“I feel like I take all these classes because school is fun and I like learning, so I’m OK with having a lot of time in class,” Konduri said.

Although she said she finds joy in learning, Konduri also said her community college course creates time conflicts where she ends up staying up later to finish other school work.

“Sometimes I have to cancel robotics for it,” Konduri said. “Because it’s so late when I get home, I (stay up) later to do homework and stuff. I’ve really tried to finish a lot of my work at school itself so that I’m not pushing back to sleep because of the time commitments I’ve already made.”

With the variety of prep options available at Paly, there are many opinions on how many one should have. Guidance counselor Jillian Bischoff said having a prep is helpful to improve students’ health and the ability to stay prepared.

“For many students with a heavy course load, it can help them keep up and do higher-quality work instead of feeling constantly behind,” Bischoff said. “In some cases, it also means getting to bed at a reasonable hour instead of staying up late every night.”

On one hand, students like Lungren say preps help with time management, especially surrounding sports.

“Because I also had a prep freshman year for doing sports, that’s always been really helpful, just so that I’m able to work and lock in on classes that I need extra help in,” Lungren said. “And just having extra time to relax because it’s a lot to have a sport full time, have a job and do school all at once, so the time that I have to rest is the best.”

Similarly, as a junior looking to apply to colleges in the fall, Fulton said a prep will help free up time to work on college applications.

“I definitely think that next year, with all the college apps and everything, two preps would be helpful,” Fulton said. “But also it’s important to take classes that you know or think you’ll do well in, so you don’t have to take another prep.”

Still, other students like Stell say preps don’t make as much of a difference in productivity as many think.

“I didn’t actually find that dramatic of a difference with a prep,” Stell said. “For some people, preps are really productive. I’m not always super productive with my prep. I use them for meetings or doctor’s appointments, but it’s sometimes hard for me to work during my prep.”

And others are willing to go without them.

“I’d rather have to manage my time than not take one of these classes and miss out,” Konduri said.

Ultimately, Altekar-Okazaki said she thinks having a prep is dependent on everyone’s individual interests and responsibilities.

“Taking a prep or not depends on your personal needs and your own life,” Altekar-Okazaki said. “Everyone’s life is different.”