Senior stress

Pressures of the “real world” overwhelm upperclassmen

Though senior year seems like a breeze, many students are more stressed senior year than any other year. We are expected to pick a college, decide what we are going to do with our lives, and finish out school strong. On top of that, many seniors have AP and IB testing, which is a whole different level of stress, amidst the stress of college.

None of us have been seniors before, so we didn’t have anything to base our ideas of senior year off of besides graduated friends. We all hear that senior year is easy, and no stress, but actually going through the year itself shows us that there are stressful things you wouldn’t really think of. Picking a college, finishing all the Naviance surveys we all forgot about, applying for scholarships. And once that’s all done, choosing classes for our freshman year of college, getting an apartment or dorm at our college, it’s all so big and daunting, and we didn’t really know what we were walking into when we started our senior year.

Choosing what you want to do with your life can be daunting, and is something some don’t think about seriously until junior or senior year. Even when we pick our majors, we still aren’t sure if that’s what we want to spend the rest of our lives doing.

Around 75% of college students in America either start college as undecided or change their major at least once throughout their college career, noted by Central College.

Not only is senior year a stressful time, but it is also a series of lasts: last football game, last performance, last high school dance. It’s a time of reflecting on our past, and looking towards our future.

We all do look forward to our  time in the real world, and feel ready to move on, but will miss the comfort of our high school friends and atmosphere. As Andy Bernard, a character from the television show The Office, once said, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days, before you’ve actually left them”.  

Many of us have taken for granted much of our high school careers, thinking, “I can’t wait for this week/month/year to be over”, when we should have been soaking in every minute of our ticking time in high school.

We’ve forgotten to take into consideration what us graduating really means. We will be making all new friends in college, or wherever we go, and our underclassmen friends will still be living their lives in high school. We will be away from all our typical people we hang out with, and will have to create a new life.

Just because we are gone doesn’t mean life in Omaha, Nebraska doesn’t keep moving along.

As we step into a new world ready for us, we must always remember the friends who felt like family, the memories that will remain in our hearts forever, and the lasting impact the lessons our teachers and friends taught us throughout our time at MN.