Regardless of whether your high school starts in 9th grade or 10th grade, you want to start thinking about what you want to do to make a living after you graduate high school or graduate college. Probably you don't have a clue. I didn't at that age. But you want to think about it. Talk to people about their jobs. Read up. But unless you are born into a lot of wealth, you will have to make a living doing something after you make it thru school.
Since you probably don't know what you want to do yet, you want to keep your options open. One large option is a career in Science Technology, Engineering, or Math (STEM). It can be fun, I did electrical engineering myself, it was a lot of problem solving, customer contact, lab work, software coding. Beats selling real estate or used cars. STEM jobs pay well and you will stay employed, layoffs are very rare.
To do a STEM major in college, you have to take integral calculus freshman year. The STEM courses are all taught with calculus, if you don't have your calculus you simply cannot understand the coursework. To take integral calculus, you have to have already taken trigonometry, two years of algebra, and preferably plane geometry. You have to take these in high school. You gotta start taking the algebra in 9th grade. Plane geometry (Euclidean geometry) is not absolutely essential, but it is very useful. You learn how you can start with a few simple ideas, use some logic and prove some remarkable theorems, using nothing but pencil and paper. And the proofs are intellectually satisfying, after doing a proof, you know it's true. This entire concept is so valuable that the plane geometry course is well worth it.
Right now, as you start high school, you probably don't know what you want to do to make a living after school. It is a shame to lock your self out of all the STEM fields because you didn't take the required math courses in high school.
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