Junior year is known for being the most difficult year of high school. The most important year of high school. Maybe even the most important year of your life so far. It is said to be a year of realization: realizing what you want to do after high school, realizing how close you are to adulthood and realizing your true potential. As I wrap up my junior year this week, I took some time to reflect on this past year and have found these common theories to be 100 percent true.
I started my junior year out with no real plan for the future. I did not know what I wanted to do after high school. Of course, I knew I wanted to go to college, but I did not know what I wanted to study, where I wanted to study or how I was going to prepare for that said topic of study. While most of these questions still do not have a definite answer, throughout my junior year, I have come a couple steps closer to getting some answers. I now know what I want to study, what I am looking for in a university, and the path I want to take to achieve my major. However, being that I am so young, it is impossible for me to know exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I say that I have answers to these questions, but I have realized that I do not need to have my entire life figured out at the age of 16.
Aside from academic realizations, I have noticed how important it is to live life in the moment. I have always known that I would graduate high school in the year 2017. However, 2017 has always seemed light years away. As 2016 crept up on me this school year, I had an epiphany that I would be graduating in one year. I was just one year away from adulthood. I realized that I had spent so much of high school worrying about the little things like not having the most fashion forward clothing or not having a date to the upcoming school dance. From that moment on, I started living my days as a high school student to its full potential, and I soaked up ever moment of it.
I went into junior year having no idea how close I was to reality, but I have come out a different person. While planning for the future, I realized how important it is to also live life in the moment. After all, high school does not last forever.
