Senior Year
According to Sarah Dessen’s novels or practically all independent rom-com movies, senior year goes a little something like this: you breeze through all your easy-A classes, you get into the college of your choice and you get to kick back and relax after the stressful and laborious junior year you just completed. Life is your oyster.
Sadly, this ideal stereotype of senior year is simply that—a false stereotype. Though you deserve a break after finishing what you thought was the hardest year of high school, think again, because the worst is yet to come. Senior year can easily be assessed as the most difficult year of high school because students have to juggle the college application process, their grades, and their extracurricular activities.
The stress of the college application process starts at the end of your junior year, when colleges begin to send you piles of junk mail and relatives begin to ask you questions such as, “So, what are you planning for college?” Now, it’s up to you to decide what you want in a college, where you want to go to college and what you want to do in college—all at the young age of sixteen. These daunting questions are not yet applicable to your life, but you have to start planning in advance anyway. Once you answer all those questions, the real work begins with filling out applications, asking teachers for recommendations, sending in test scores and writing supplemental essays. Mix this in with the added pressure of parents and high school, and you are set for a year of never-ending stress.
“The hardest part of senior year that I’m struggling with is trying to find balance between everything I do while still putting my best effort into it,” said senior Ellis Hyman.
If the college process alone does not seem intimidating enough, do not worry! After all, you still have to manage all of your high school classes and maintain decent grades. And if you thought your classes would be a breeze, you might want to reconsider that misconception. Classes do not necessarily get harder, they just become harder to manage with the added stress of applying to college. During senior year, there are still the average homework assignments, tests and projects. However, these humdrum assignments seem less important and are a lot harder to complete when you have to worry about them along with application deadlines or extra supplemental essays that you did not know existed.
On top of the classes and your applications, you have to manage the extracurricular they do outside of school. You cannot drop the extracurricular activities, as you have probably been involved in them for years and dropping them would reflect poorly on your applications, but continuing them just leads to added pressure, creating a catch-22.
When the factors of senior year are taken individually, they do not seem as daunting. However, the constant juggling of your high school classes, extracurricular activities and college applications that make senior year the most stressful year of high school.
Junior Year
A junior in high school is quite easy to identify among a crowd—his hair is disheveled, he looks sleep deprived and he looks emotionally exhausted. This is because junior year is the hardest year, as it typically consists of the most rigorous course load and the most intense class schedule. On top of an ever-growing pile of homework, students also have to write the infamous ISP and prepare for the most important tests of their high school career: the SAT and/or ACT.
Junior year is comprised of some of the hardest classes a CHS has to offer; for example, all students must take chemistry and most students are required to take an advanced math course. Along with those two staples, most students opt to take a language or engage in a sport. This creates a hectic schedule for any student.
“I have to take a million SAT and ACT prep classes and I still have a lot of required academic classes to take too,” said junior Amanda Rose.
Along with laborious homework, junior students have to prepare for their standardized testing of choice. No test is easier; in fact, both tests take a toll on all students’ mental stability and leave students with low self-esteem and high bills for tutors. In order to prep for these tests, students have to set aside a substantial amount of time to study and take practice tests. This takes away valuable time that could be used to study or complete last-minute AP United States History notes.
When older siblings, college counselors and upperclassmen warn those approaching junior year that it is surely the hardest year of high school, they are not lying. So buckle up, juniors, because you are in for a stressful and overwhelming ride.
