“Senior year is the easiest year of high school,” friends and family once told me.
However, that’s not always the case.
People often hear counselors say, “you still have a lot to do.”
Sometimes people say the workload would be easier due to the difficulty of junior year. The schedule for the year is always depicted as an elective-focused schedule, since all of the seniors’ harder classes were taken junior year. Although the majority of seniors can have an elective-focused schedule, they still have to take the required courses in order to graduate.
The year also comes with many fun events such as senior sunrise, homecoming, turnabout, prom, graduation and many more. The last feeling of the “last” event can feel bittersweet for many seniors.
The year often gets viewed as a year to wind down and relax, and also enjoy the last 9-10 months of high school.
Senior year has many stressful aspects such as college applications, college essays and all the senior events that follow, but a lot of people don’t touch on the behind the scenes of stress and anxiety that it could bring.
Hearing the same questions over and over again can be exhausting. What’s your plans after high school? Are you applying for scholarships? How many colleges are you applying to? Are you going to any of the senior events?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “1 in 10 students had persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.” That feeling of hopelessness that seniors describe is commonly referred to as senioritis.
Senioritis is a term used to describe the burnout of senior year. With the workload of taking AP and IB courses, it’s hard to maintain grades while trying to figure out future plans.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), teens explained that their stress levels exceed due to the stress of the school year. It stated, “Teens reported that their stress levels during the school year far exceeded what they believe to be healthy (5.8 vs. 3.9 on a 10-point scale) and topped adults’ average reported stress levels (5.8 for teens vs. 5.1 for adults).”
Outside of academics, seniors often feel the fear of leaving their friends behind. It’s the loss of familiarity that seniors feel when it is time to leave high school. Psychology Today stated, “The denial of leaving friends stems from the fear of losing the familiarity and comfort that these relationships provide.”
Seniors also fear the unknown. The ideology of having figured out can create unwanted anxiety.
According to the American Institute of Stress 76% of high school students face and deals with stress in school.
With the next step being college for many along with paying for all the high school events, there is a lot of financial stress that seniors face. The fear of not having the finances to pay for college makes students feel stressed.
According to the National Association of Student Financial Aid administrators, “72.1 percent of students feel stress about their personal finances and close to 60 percent of all students report that they worry about having enough money to pay for their education.”
Although the workload and the events that come along with senior year feels hard, the award of graduating is the best part of it all.
