What’s Up with Junior Year


Ed Bolden and Grace Gintz

Junior year is oftentimes said to be the most difficult year out of anyone’s high school career. With major stressors such as taking the ACT, beginning to look into colleges, and maintaining a promising GPA, students can feel overwhelmed. Most teens also work part-time jobs in order to save up money for things like college and cars. Adding extracurricular activities and other resume builders is time-consuming, causing early burnout. For example, Kevin Chou complained that  “ACT testing, classwork, and classes like economics really stresses me out.”


Though junior year seems like a stressful headache-filled mess, there are many advantages. Being able to attend the school prom, and other elevated freedoms such as participation in Nerf wars, better seating in the student sections, and more class choices make school life better. Additionally, many students start to finally feel like school is falling into place. For senior Megan Philkill, she believes that it is during junior year “when a lot of people realize, ‘oh no, I need to start getting serious.’”  Additionally, senior Arabella Vitt says that junior year is “when you really get to know people and form true friendships.”

Unfortunately, pessimism is often a tendency when talking about the third year of high school. The social aspect can be tolling, many people lose and create new friendships. Staying positive is hard to do. To make it worse, maintaining a positive outlook can seem like just one more thing that needs to get done. 

With all the stress and events that take place in Junior year, it is really easy to give up and not want to do any work, but senior Arabella Vitt reminds current juniors that  “All the challenges from junior year showed me how to work hard for college applications and how to prepare for higher education, [while] also showing me how to relax and have fun.”


Your third year of high school puts you through the wringer; however, in the end, you will see all of the treacherous work you put in finally pay off. Your junior year helps you become a more well-rounded person. You grow both mentally and physically pushing yourself to take a leap into the future.