Junior Year: A Humorous (Reality) Perspective

I ran across this article today and LOVED it, so I, of course, wanted to share it with you. Although written in a humorous tone with homage to current reality TV shows, it speaks the truth about the importance of junior year, both for the high school experience itself and for the upcoming college search and selection process. Enjoy! The reality of the situation … junior year of high school By Alison H. Gluck/Guest Columnist Tue Sep 09, 2008, 11:17 AM EDT The stress of junior year is something known all too well to high school students nationwide. Freshmen hear about it; sophomores dread it; juniors endure it; and for seniors, it’s a recurring nightmare that just won’t go away. Although we all shudder at the thought of it, it’s reality. Junior Year Reality. Naive underclassmen float through their worlds on the sweet winds of ignorance, worrying about such mundane challenges as freshman physics and tennis team tryouts. They hear snippets in the halls about what juniors go through and wonder why and how an entire grade can be pulling their hair out all at once. Their confusion is understandable; for those who have not yet begun to experience The Amazing Race that is junior year, the Dog Eat Dog atmosphere must seem a little disconcerting. It’s only once the halcyon days of sophomore summer end and the junior year begins that students start to understand the root of the craziness. Students will no longer wonder, as the juniors around them run for The Hills at the sound of the loudspeaker paging them to College Counseling. For juniors, there is something looming on the not-too-distant horizon … something that 11th grade requires them to acknowledge … something so frightening that the Fear Factor is at an all-time high. It’s the beginning of a journey into a place that was previously unacknowledged and unfathomable; it’s the beginning of the journey into The Real World. It’s true. Gone is The Simple Life as we knew it. Absent are the carefree afternoons spent with friends and family. What was formerly free time is now packed solid with AP coursework, SAT preparation and the beginning of the dreaded college admissions process. We are barraged with messages about the importance of building a resume for college, some blatant, some subliminal. To be The Contender for top schools, juniors have to be on all cylinders for the entire year. It seems at times that we’re at a Boiling Point, with no end in sight. All of us work very hard to be America’s Next Top Model student, but there are no guarantees that our hard work will pay off. Nor can we predict where we will end up — who will be successful; who will fail? Will he be The Billionaire or The Biggest Loser? Should we focus on what we love to do and hope that our passion will carry us to personal and professional happiness? Do we really have to strive to be the best, or just our personal best? Must those foodies among us have their sights on the Top Chef honor, or is being a very good cook enough? Why is our college decision The Gauntlet? Are there not other roads to happiness? Maybe I’m just Dancing with the Stars in my eyes, but it does seem to me that those who have come before us can serve as examples. They were juniors once, too. Talented juniors. Let’s face it, America’s Got Talent, and we should recognize our own personal talents and follow our dreams as well as the prescribed blueprints for success. If we think about those people in our lives … those former juniors … whom we admire and hold out as successful, we can be guided by their choices and their journeys. They are our American Idols, aren’t they? They have endured junior year and have gone on to live happy, normal lives. Shockingly, we don’t even know which colleges they attended. If we can maintain some perspective; if we can bust the junior mystique and get through 11th grade unscathed, we will join the ranks of those who have succeeded before us. We will be seniors, those people with whom we would, today, very much like to be Trading Spaces. And it will be our job, once we’re seniors, to help the next class of juniors navigate the labyrinth of 11th grade. We should make each one of them The Apprentice, and guide their sorry souls through the paths we have already traveled. That will be our legacy. For now, though, when all of the philosophizing is set aside and the harsh reality of junior year of high school is upon us, we have but one goal. We must tunnel our vision; we must focus on the task at hand. For whatever else we are, whatever else we may become, the Class of 2009 will emerge from junior year, and we will be what all self-respecting 11th-graders dream of being … Survivors. Alison Gluck, a Newton resident, is now a senior at Gann Academy in Waltham. She offers her sympathy for all juniors and assures them that this, too, shall pass.