Surviving Junior Year

By Angela Li | VOX Staff

Art by Stanley Stewart | VOX Staff

It’s 3 a.m. and you’re still awake at the computer screen, furiously typing your paper for English class. Textbooks and 700-page novels are piled around you, some stained with rings from coffee mugs of all-nighters past. In the corner of your screen, you notice a new Facebook message from one of your best friends, but you restrain yourself from replying – or maybe you don’t. Either way, a little voice in your head tells you that you still have many hours of work to go. And somewhere from another room, you hear the deep, guttural snore that means nobody else is awake but you. If this scene doesn’t sound familiar to you yet, chances are that it will by the end of junior year.

Sure, there are some who see junior year as just another chance to goof off, have fun and socialize. Most teens, however, view the 11th grade as the critical year in determining their future plans for education — and colleges do too. Admissions officers scrutinize everything you accomplish as a junior — from classwork to extracurricular activities to community service to your scores on the dreaded SATs. What all this really means is that junior year might be the most stressful year you’ll face in high school.

Still, it doesn’t have to become an exercise in clinging to your sanity. My own experience with junior year ended up teaching me a lot about stress, expectations and how to stop the trauma before it starts.

Recipe For Disaster
I admit I’m probably guilty of setting myself up for failure. I began my junior year obsessing over my eligibility for the most elite schools in the country ­— universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. To craft a better college application, I crammed as many AP classes into my schedule as possible last year, ending up with what was basically a university course load. On top of that, I decided it would benefit my application to join four different orchestras as well as a ridiculous number of clubs and extracurricular activities.

My life became an increasingly hectic mix of five-hour rehearsals and last-minute essays. The weird thing is, I wasn’t alone.

“You feel all these pressures on you to be the perfect student,” says Neil Sethi, a senior at Alpharetta High. “And you’ve got no choice but to try and do it all.”

In the media center, where I struggled to finish projects and cram for exams most mornings, I met countless people looking just as frazzled and exhausted as I did.

“Sleeping? That’s secondary to staying on top of your work,” said David Chi, a fellow senior at Alpharetta High. We’d both joined a bizarre group in whichww trading notes and comparing extracurricular activities took the place of hanging out and watching movies.

Needless to say, my real social life suffered. Friends would invite me to parties on Friday nights, but I’d turn them down in favor of an elusive good night’s sleep. At some point, I remember browsing College Confidential, an online discussion forum about college and college admissions, and coming across a poster offering advice to juniors. It read: “Tell your friends to go away if they interfere with school.” It’s a testament to the stress I felt back then that I didn’t even consider the idea far-fetched.

My Personal Emancipation
It was in late April, dangerously near the infamous AP exams, when the absurdity of my life struck me. I was making my agenda for the evening as usual, but when I looked at the sheer number of items on the list – a Literature essay, timelines for American History, a Spanish presentation, and studying for tests in both Calculus and Physics — I was overwhelmed to the point of physical exhaustion. After-school engagements had already worn away my energy. To keep myself awake at 11 p.m. to finish five hours of homework just seemed like too much to handle. I stared at the computer screen with tears streaming down my cheeks, messaging my friend James about how stressed out I was over school.

His response was instantaneous. “Well, why did you decide to take five AP classes on top of everything you’re doing?”

My response came just as quickly: “Because I need them for college. Harvard won’t want someone who doesn’t challenge themselves with difficult classes!”

The words sounded so ridiculous as I typed them on the screen that I almost laughed out loud. I was supposed to be challenging myself, not torturing myself. That was the night I realized that I didn’t need to tackle a course load of disastrous difficulty to prove my own self-worth.

It was a little too late to change things, of course. The AP Exams were about to go full-force, classes were winding down, and most of my clubs and organizations were about to hold their end-of-year banquets. Still, I learned a valuable (and liberating) lesson. No college, one billion dollar endowment or not, is worth the stress I went through last year.

Looking Back
I wish I’d had someone to tell me sooner that I didn’t have to do everything. Turns out, colleges don’t really want overachieving robots. They want people with passion. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a policy debater or a rapper, as long as you show that you’re pursuing the things you love.

I still want to go to Harvard, but my junior year has taught me that everyone needs to pursue their goals on their own terms. So this year, I’ve worked with my counselor to shape a course schedule that I’ll actually enjoy. I’m cutting out the extracurricular activities that don’t hold an important place in my heart, and I’m not allowing myself to be courted by the group of stressed-out overachievers I so readily fit in with last year. I’ve also made myself a promise to slow down every once in a while and remind myself that although school is important, it’s not the end-all, be-all of my life. Sometimes, you just have to stop and smell the proverbial roses.

Angela Li is a senior at Alpharetta High who is ready to work hard AND play hard.