Let's not beat around the bush about senior year: it's not as great as you hear. All of high school you're just waiting to get to your senior year- to be the top of the food chain and feel like you run the place. Everyone who's graduated says senior year is the best year; you'll make so many memories, it's finally the year people abandon cliques and live a happy harmonious life. However, they're wrong.

I say this only because I don't want anybody going into their senior year with incredible expectations only to come out feeling 'blah' about it. Senior year is mostly like any other year of high school. The only true, noticeable difference is the stress level. Everyone for the first semester is swamped with work and college applications and what have you, and it takes a toll. The worst part is, senioritis hits before you even enter the school on the first day, but you can't give up, there's far too much to do. You're too busy to use the little time you have left at home before everyone goes their separate ways, it's hard to make it the best year of high school if you can never leave high school.

Of course, there's always the infamous set of questions from friends and family: "Do you know where you're going to school? Are you dating anybody? What do you want to do after high school?" It will overwhelm you. Eventually, you'll leave it to your parents to explain everything, until they come to you with follow up questions. Half the time you still haven't made any final decisions, so the follow-up question becomes "what are your top schools? Someone I have an obscure connection with went there! They loved it. Great program for what you want to do" and truth be told, you couldn't care less, at least not after the first three times you've heard it.

Only at the very end of the year when all final decisions have been made and everyone is about to part ways do you start to enjoy yourself because you realize you haven't been. Suddenly, everybody seems to have a month left before they leave, so you flood every memory in all at once. Looking back, those are the things you'll remember- not the excessive amounts of stress or who you told your future plans to- no, you'll discard that as soon as you get the chance. That's why you hear such wonderful things about senior year because you only hear a fraction of the story.

Unfortunately, we don't only get to live that fraction, we have to round out the year. We have to take on the stress and loads of tasks, that way we can enjoy that fraction more. So yeah, senior year isn't great; in fact, it's far from it. All you can hope is that when you look back on it, you'll remember the great and not much else so you have something to look back on when you go your separate ways. Until then, make the best of it, and take lots of naps.