Everyone has heard that junior year is the hardest and most important year of high school. It is the year colleges will look at the most; it’s the year I have to take the PSAT. It’s the year I have to start creating a college list and really start thinking about my future. For these reasons and many more, I feel like I am under a lot of pressure. I am completely clueless and oblivious of what’s to come.
I have been feeling overwhelmed just from what I have heard from students and social media. The fact that I decided to take three AP’s, and I’m cheering for football, basketball, and competition season is adding on to that pressure. As school started getting closer I kept thinking about how I was going to manage all of these things.
And honestly even now it’s a little too early in the year to really say. But as I was thinking this, I was also thinking about colleges; they are going to see that I managed to take 3 APs and cheer. Everything I do and don’t do in terms of academics and extracurriculars, I am thinking about what colleges will think. I don’t obsess over it but it’s always in the back of my mind. For example, right now I have no community service hours, and although they are no longer required to graduate; I know they would look really good on my college application. Every time I think about this I beat myself up about it. I start stressing and thinking that colleges aren’t going to accept me because I haven’t done enough.
College is a lot closer than we think. After this year I will be a senior, and then it’s off to college. That thought is scary to me. I feel like this year will determine what college I go to and what I will major in. Most of the classes I’m taking are classes that I am genuinely interested in but I am also hoping they will make me “stand out” to colleges. The next 2 years are going to be all about college, and I feel like I am just going to be constantly overwhelmed and clueless.
At times I honestly feel like I’m the only one feeling all this anxiety about junior year; but after one of my AP Language and Composition classes I realized that I’m not the only one. My AP Lang teacher asked all of us to go around in a circle and tell the class how the school year was going. Most of us said the same thing: we were all just waiting for the mountain of work to hit us. We were filled with anxiety and pressure to do well this year. This was actually really refreshing to hear; I wasn’t the only one who felt like this. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so isolated, because everyone else was also feeling what I was feeling: pressure and anxiety. That discussion in class is what inspired me to write this article. I wanted to let juniors (and anyone who is worried about junior year) know that most of us are feeling the same way and we are all just trying to get through this year. Plus so many students before us have gotten through junior year just fine.