[Cuog]

My junior year of HS was pretty rough. I don't remember my course load(I don't remember much from that year honestly). I managed with 4 hours of sleep a night for a few months including build season and surrounding.

Some of the pitfalls: I was sick a lot. I'm usually sick once a year if that, that year I was sick four or five times. This was not only caused by lack of sleep, but also helped make it worse. My classwork suffered, and my team involvement suffered.

There are two things you can really do. First is to manage your time, decide exactly how much time you have for each task you need to do. This includes sleep. Sleep time isn't decided by whatever is left over after everything else is done. Budget 6-8 hours for it. If you're exhausted move up bedtime and wake up earlier. I've found that waking up 2 hours earlier is easier and more productive than trying to stay up just a half hour later than when your body begins demanding sleep. Second know where to cut. If 24hrs aren't enough to get everything done for the day its time to start taking things off the to-do list. Maybe leave the robotics meeting an hour early to get HW done if you have a heavy load that day, or skip it altogether. I don't know how your team is, but I have a hard time telling students they should be focusing on FIRST at the detriment of their studies. It doesn't help to inspire students towards STEM, then shoot them in the foot accidentally by disallowing appropriate homework time.

Also as tempting as it is to start drinking energy drinks, mountain dew, caffeine etc. stay away from that stuff as much as you can. It helps in the short term, but over the course of a semester or build season, it all starts to catch up with you.