Junior year sounds awesome. And it is, for the most part. We are out of the new phase and have entered the stage where we know everything, have more grown-up responsibilities, and are able to juggle more on our plate. Actually, junior year felt an awful lot like a job. But a job where I am able to attend the best school in the nation, hang out with my friends when I have time, and work with some cool people.
This is the year where you start getting your stuff together. Freshman year was for the laughs, sophomore year was where you tried to get it together, and junior year is the year where you are really going to get your life on track to a kick-ass job after graduation. This means taking on more responsibilities, like becoming an officer of a club or starting an internship to enhance your resume. Adding these things onto an already busy school schedule makes for a stressful year. Not only are you worried about disappointing your parents with possible bad grades, but also now you are worried about maintaining a job and making sure your employer thinks you’re just as smart as your resume makes you look.
Yes, having an internship is tough, but we sometimes overlook the main reason why junior year is such a pain in the butt. School suddenly gets really, really hard. I don’t know if I can speak for everyone, but for myself and others that I have talked to, we agree that the classes junior year somehow jumped in difficulty level. I don’t know if I thought college remained at a doable level for the entire four years, but I was rudely jolted and found out that junior year is just plain hard. The classes are all in your major, which means the professors expect you to perform at a higher level. Junior year classes mean that you don’t get to go and see your friends every day because you have four projects, three papers, and a daily writing assignment to finish each week.
While junior year may sound like a torture chamber of a year, I found that it helped me balance job life with school life. It taught me that it does take work to maintain good grades in hard classes. It also taught me that fun has to be earned. So, enjoy junior year and all it offers, because even though it kicked my butt, it still went by way too fast.
