Before I  started middle school, the only thing I knew about high school was that junior year was the hardest year of anyone’s schooling career. And as I approach the end of the infamous year, I agree.

In the beginning of the year, 11th grade was a breeze. As junior year was the first year I started to take AP classes, and I’ll admit this was challenging at first, I got the hang of it rather quickly.  School, itself, did not seem to be that much more challenging compared to my other two years of high school.

And then the looming topic of college arrived; everything picked up once there was the underlying fact that, in less than a year, applications for college will have to be submitted.  This is when all the stress started to kick in.  Along with your college application, you want to have good test scores and a lot of extracurriculars. I, having little to no extracurriculars, decided to try and cram as many clubs in as possible during my junior year. This, ultimately, failed miserably as I found that I did not have time to do the other things I enjoyed.  Besides the necessity for more clubs on my college app., the biggest issue I had this year in school was the ACT.  School would be going perfectly day-to-day, and then all of the sudden I would realize that the ACT is in three weeks…  and for that three-week period I would cram as much as possible. As I rant about my junior year stresses, I will give some tips to you rising juniors and underclassmen to save you from having similar experiences that I did.

The biggest thing that I found as a stress reliever was a good night’s sleep.  Now, I’m not saying that each Friday and Saturday night, you should be sleeping, but if there is an opportunity to come home from your weekend festivities and have a good nights sleep, please take advantage of it.  As for the school-week, try to go bed as early as possible. The worst thing you can do is to not sleep and be tired during class because that is when you start to miss important content.

As for the ACT, start as early as possible to try to get it out of the way.  I recommend starting with the October one as a baseline, and then to sign up for every ACT date after that. Although it can be hard juggling schoolwork and after-school activities, always try to work in some ACT prep every day and study as much as you can. Unfortunately, ACT’s can make or break a college acceptance, so work as hard as you can early on to get the best results.

Last but not least, if you are an underclassman, try out as many different clubs as early as you can.  If you find three clubs that you enjoy a lot, stick with them, and this will make a world’s difference on a college application. Take advantage of all John Jay has to offer after school; from Yearbook to Chess Club, I’m sure you can find a club or two that you enjoy.

So, good luck, and I hope reading this made a difference and/or gave you some insight on conquering your junior year of high school.