Aionna Gunn ‘28, Photo Editor
Many would say that junior year of high school stress is inevitable. It is as if the first two years of high school are the rising action to junior year, then junior year hits as the climax. Both juniors themselves and seniors could vouch that junior year is the hardest year of high school because of the stress and expectations it entails. This leads people to question the obvious: why do juniors get the lousy end of the deal?
There are many factors that make junior year arguably more difficult, such as the need to find and maintain balance between school and personal life. Steven Schlozman from The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds said, “Students themselves are increasingly led to believe that the junior year of high school should be something akin to academic and extracurricular boot camp.” This pressure is leading students to not spend much time outside of school doing things they enjoy, and instead taking much more time studying and preparing for college or completing other difficult coursework at such a young age.
Sunshine Learning Miami backs up that 63 percent of people report that the amount of homework students have always made it difficult or challenging to spend time with family and friends. Though this statistic illuminates all students, it applies to juniors more aggressively given they have to take the SAT, and they are getting closer to college.
Senior Kailee Brown, a successful student with many extracurriculars, and a passion for nursing, gives input on her junior year of high school: “I did not have much time to do my own stuff outside of school, and I was more tired from studying.” Brown is a determined student who is committed to volleyball and community in church, though she claims junior year specifically led to quicker burn outs. This may sound small, but it builds up and creates a pattern of always being tired and unmotivated, which can seriously affect a person’s mental health.
Senior Lucy Williams, regarding her experience from last year, said, “[Junior year] decreased my mental health. The stress of it was hard to deal with…” School is becoming people’s lives, and making mental battles even harder than they are with just life.
Although balancing things is essential to life, it should never be a constant struggle. Junior year differs in stress exponentially more than any other year of high school, so far that teachers themselves are seeing the impact that this pressure has on students’ participation, body language in class and attitude. Ms. Stephanie Stoneback, English teacher at SLHS, has seen this first hand: “I definitely see kids becoming more withdrawn from their peers…their focus is primarily on getting their work done or… catching up on sleep… opposed to spending those moments either genuinely learning or just having fun and socializing with their friends.”
Some students could say that school sometimes feels restrictive. Juniors are consistently given lots of assignments, but no time for the rest of their life. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students spend roughly 1-4 hours on homework every night. Students lose sleep due to having many assignments due everyday and not enough time to complete them. This results in students spending hours finishing assignments – leaving them tired and restless. Teachers themselves see the impact that the curriculum has on students.
Learners are also being impacted by the decrease in their social life. Community is essential for human life, yet junior year is spilt into this time. For example, students are found not being able to stay out late most days, or spend time with their friends on the weekends because of the amount of assignments they are being assigned, and other obligations like work.
Junior Keagan Shaw said, “I cannot stay out late because school is so early in the morning the next day, and I rarely can leave the house once I get home from school…because I have so much homework.” This is exactly what causes students to feel so drained and unmotivated throughout the year. Most of the time, students have the ability to do those things, and get out of the house, but for those in their junior year it is not the case.
Though these factors are all part of junior year, the worry about the future is probably the biggest one. Brown said she was, “second guessing if [her] career was the right fit for [her].” She felt doubtful because she “did not have experience in multiple areas of nursing.” These worries are instilled in juniors due to the pressure that school, peers, and parents put on them. The pressure may even come from themselves. This shifts their perspective to focus on the future, such as college, rather than one day at a time, which could only distract them further from school.
Some might ask, “why do students receive so much of this pressure about the future?” The answer to this question is success. Brown said, “I felt like I had to be perfect all the time and that I had to be successful no matter what.” Everyone wants to be successful, but exorbitant amounts of stress is not the way to do it. Students struggle all over the board with this due to the cause of this issue, which Brown finds to be: “an overfilled schedule, and the school to life ratio [leaning] very heavy towards school.”
With this being said, what are some ways that students can balance their school to life ratio? One significant thing to do with this stress is the natural response to procrastinate. But, everyone knows this causes even more unintentional stress. So, staying on top of work and prioritizing school first may give more time to do social activities and extracurriculars.
Creating a schedule where you sit down at a specific time and do school work can be very beneficial for saving time and avoiding procrastination. Junior year will be hard, and there will be burn outs, but it is up to the people to persevere, despite all of these factors, in order to get through junior year.
