Junior year of high school is a year known for being tedious with standardized tests and an added homework load compared to freshman and sophomore year. Although I heard these assumptions before, I did not really take the assumptions into full consideration. I thought that the assumptions were just exaggerations. It has been a little over two months into junior year and I am beginning to understand why these assumptions were made.

I am not going to say that I was expecting a walk in the park, but I was expecting a fairly moderate homework load, which is not the case. I am not referring to the homework load for just one class but the homework load of all the classes combined. It might just be all the rigorous classes I am taking, but I do not recall having such a large homework load in sophomore year or freshman year.

Some of my fellow juniors have a standpoint of indifference on the academic pressures of junior year.

“Junior year academically has not been as difficult as most assumptions of junior year make it to be,” junior Theodore Lindstrom said. “The great academic pressures of junior year are overly promoted as true for everybody, which they are not.”

The current seniors have their own perspectives on how was their junior year academic experience. The seniors may have a skewed vision of junior year since the hardships of junior year are in the past for them.

“Junior year was just like any other school year of high school … there was nothing different for me about the homework load,” senior Michael Taskin said. “As of the academic pressures or assumptions of the SAT, it did not matter to me; I just attempted to do my best like I always do.”

The teachers similarly added some insightful outlooks on how was their junior year academic experiences. Likewise, the teachers understood that academically junior year was a causation of stress, but stated that the pressures were different back when they were students.

“There was little to no SAT preparation back when I was a junior … so there was little consensus on how the SAT was going to look like on the day of testing,” Biology and Intro to Health Careers teacher,Tiffany Kupkowski said. “High schools also did not have such developed career pathway programs as they do now, so there was different struggles back then as a junior.”

Overall, junior year maybe overshadowed by standardized tests and a significant amount of schoolwork, but junior year is more than just standardized tests and an added homework load: junior year is about becoming more college ready and more importantly life ready. Not everything in life is going to be a walk in the park: sometimes there will be obstacles, but one must learn to overcome those obstacles.