The Mycenaean

When people hear about junior year, they instantly complain about it being the most challenging year of high school or dreading the year to come. Usually, that is attributed to a rigorous class load and college planning, but I have come to see that ultimately, it’s the battle of balance—balancing school, friends, and growing up. 

During junior year, you feel the constant need to perform. Get the best grades, take the hardest classes, ace the SAT and ACT, stay involved, and show leadership. When it comes time to apply for college in the fall, you are equipped to stand out. 

Then, everywhere you turn, someone always asks you the dreaded question: “What are your plans for college?” Then it sinks in a little more that your time in high school is coming to an end, and you have to start making difficult decisions about the future. 

For hard-working students trying to do it all, this creates immense stress. Accompanied by maintaining friendships, the day-to-day gets harder. 

Students are at the point in their friendships where they have established a particular group of people they align with. But as the years go by, you understand people more and more, and with that comfort level, conflict arises. For a while, it is easy to move on from, but when people start questioning others’ character, friendships go downhill. 

Though these patterns are prevalent throughout high school, they are specific during junior year because this is a time of peak self-discovery. Students are finding a sense of self that is centered largely on their own identity. This shift often brings emotional challenges as friendships evolve or fade. Sometimes growing up also means growing apart from people you care about. You realize that the people you were once close to don’t hold the same morals you have come to understand. 

Friends are supposed to be an outlet when school gets hard, but what happens when your relief becomes your biggest stressor? 

There ends up being no escape from your stress, and at every turn, it feels like you are walking on glass. Trying to distribute your weight so the glass doesn’t shatter beneath you is the hardest part of it all. Do you devote your energy to saving your friendships or studying for that test you have tomorrow? With energy already lacking and burnout kicking it becomes taxing to make even the smallest decision.  Sometimes it feels like there is no end in sight, especially when college application season is right around the corner.

Despite that, high school is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, this is the only time everyone in your class is in the same stage of life as you. We live through similar struggles, apply for the same opportunities, and share common experiences at the same time. After you graduate, you are never in the same stage of life with the same people again. People take their own path and do things on their own.

High school is more than just academics and extracurriculars– it is a defining part of our lives that shapes us and how we see the world.  The hardest part is the pressure to find yourself, and the image you want others to see. This is the beauty, but also the bitter reality of high school. You want to hold on to memories, but also want to get out as fast as you can. I now realize when people say junior year is the hardest year of high school, they are right, but not for the reasons I thought.