Kelsey Kroutch, 12:

Trig, Physics and NHS; oh my!

Everyone always says high school is going to be the best four years of your life, but I seriously hope that is not the truth. Freshmen are going to complain that high school is so much harder than middle school. There’s more homework and responsibilities here, and teachers aren’t going to hold your hand and watch over you through it all.

Here’s the thing, though, and I hate to break it to you all, but freshman year is going to be the easiest year of the rest of your life. The classes are all general and there isn’t a huge workload. Sure the adjustment might be scary (and what the heck are finals, right?), but I promise you’ll look back and realize how nice that first year is. Sophomore year was great. I was in the harder classes you can take as a sophomore, but still the material wasn’t too challenging and it was still easy to be involved. Senior year for me isn’t hard at all; there’s just one subject ruining my life and college stuff is stressful, but that’s all manageable.

Junior year and I sort of butted heads. I was in trig, physics and anatomy, I had never experienced so much homework. Missing a day? Might as well miss the week and never come back because you’ll be so behind in notes. If you’re not there yet, you’ll face confusing formulas, tests you actually have to study for and possibly only sleeping a few hours a week.

I don’t say this to make freshmen and sophomores throw in the towel before it’s too late, and I do legitimize the actual struggles of each year. However, if you’re on the same track I am and end up some of the same classes at once, junior year is notoriously crushing.

There are benefits to every hardship, even eleventh grade. This is the year that really taught me how to study for subjects I never really had to before. I can promise you I had never studied for a math test pre-trig. Also, I got to be a part of some cool stuff throughout the school because I was able to really narrow down what I liked and wanted to pursue in college. Plus, my softball team won the 4A State Championship, so that was pretty neat.

As a senior, I’ve been able to test out every year and give you all my honest opinion. Junior year, when including certain classes, is infamous for ruining students’ GPAs and motivation. Juniors – my heart and support goes out to you. As many times as I know you’ve already told your parents you’re dropping out of school altogether, I encourage you to stick it out just a little longer. You’ll emerge from the storm and be able to say you survived, and you’ll have better study habits and a sense of who you are.

Shaelee Philgreen, 10

Sophomore Fear

Coming from the viewpoint of a student who has only been going to high school for two years, sophomore year has undoubtedly been the worst. Freshmen year I remember everybody was complaining about how hard the year was as I was just floating on by. I wish that freshman year had been harder for me because high school went from the easiest year of my learning career to the hardest. I don’t even understand why it’s so hard for me, it isn’t that my classes are hard or anything; I just feel so overwhelmed for absolutely no reason. I suppose all of the testing has me wired along with taking harder classes. This year even when I have all of my homework done I still feel like there is something I need to do. The pressure to figure out what I want to do with my life doesn’t help either, there are so many options. It’s a common struggle for everybody really, most everybody doesn’t know what to do with their lives as adults. Props to you if you have it all figured out. Nonetheless, whenever I get anxious I have a tendency to plan out all of my future to feel more settled; even though I know more likely than not that life will butt in and ruin everything. It calms me down to focus on all of the things in my life that determine my future, it motivates me to keep on pushing in school. It helps me to know that if I don’t drop out of high school or college that in the end I could make around 145 dollars an hour being a well known fertility specialist, which I plan on pursuing. In the end, no matter how stressed out sophomore year makes me with the amount of testing, the pressure to know my life path and an overall feeling of not being done, I know it’s worth it.