Senior Year: Is It Stressful or Relaxing?
The college wheel at the North campus of Arrowhead helps give some college ideas to outgoing seniors.
“Senior year can either be stressful or relaxing, depending on how you prepare for it your freshman, sophomore and junior years,” says senior Alex Braunschweig.
College applications opened up in August. According to 360 Financial Literacy, an organization that helps people with their financial problems, the deadline for most college applications is typically November, if you are planning to enroll the next fall.
Arrowhead seniors, who want to go to college, have most likely started applying to colleges, and thinking about what they want to go to school for, or major in.
Braunschweig said she started applying to colleges in August, and started writing her essays then also.
AHS guidance counselor Theresa Hayden says seniors who are currently filling out applications, writing essays, and stressing about college should break all of the work up.
Hayden says, “If you think about it as a project, it is going to be impossible to accomplish, but if you chop it up and do bits and pieces, it will make it seem easier.”
Arrowhead staff also help students with writing these essays. Seniors could attended a College Writing Workshop either in the summer or fall, in which AHS teachers were there to help correct and edit students essays.
Hayden says she would encourage freshmen to get adjusted to high school, because it is “so different” than what they were doing in middle school. Then, when they are sophomores, juniors and seniors they can really focus on their academics.
Braunschweig says that junior year for her was by far the hardest year. She took took three Advanced Placement (AP) classes, which “demanded a lot of my time,” mix that in with swimming for Arrowhead, volunteering for various organizations, and work, “it was a load!”
She also says that she is “slacking” senior year with only taking two AP classes, because colleges see want to see you are working hard.
Braunschweig made sure to take classes that corresponded with the major she wants to have, which is nursing, so she can be a neonatal nurse practitioner. She is planning on attending the University of Alabama but is still undecided whether she will attend Birmingham or Emory.
One tip that Hayden says that, is in the spring months, “seniors should be enjoying the time that they still have with their friends and teachers and in the community that they are in right now,” cherishing every moment.
