It is that time of year again, isn’t it? We just cannot seem to prolong summer enough. Even so, summer this year did not feel like a true free vacation because those summer assignments and standardized tests were fantastic reminders of our absolute favorite place: school! Next summer won’t be much better either, because that’s college app season—yikes.

Even though that ruddy mindset will set us up for failure, it is hard to not think that way. If someone told you to think positive thoughts, what would we even think of anyway? I just can’t wait to get 4 hours of sleep and wake up when it’s dark every day! I just love doing loads of doc analyses!

Forcing ourselves to think positively definitely will not work, because it is true that junior year (and all of high school) is one rough ride. Perhaps instead of trying to force positive thoughts, maybe we could just take everything one small step at a time.

In this day and age we dwell on huge, seemingly unreachable goals too often, such as getting into top-notch, brand-name colleges and receiving perfect standardized test scores. Not all of us, but a lot of us; and I find myself among those people sometimes. I’m not proud of that, but I know that it is all the talk and social media that is infiltrating my brain.

We need to let these stigmas of less-than-perfect standardized test scores and not-getting-accepted-into-your-dream-college go. Obviously not much in life goes the way we want it to, so why should we even bother dreaming about this stuff in the first place? Although it is time to start talking about college for us incoming juniors, college is still a long way off compared to small, regular things like our weekly assessments and our daily homework assignments.

I believe those small, regular happenings are our real concentration. Not just assessments and homework, of course! Our mental health and physical wellbeing is much, much more important than an A on that math test. If we are equipped with a good nights sleep (*cough*) a little bit more time management (*cough cough*) and great friends ( 😀 ) we could achieve so much more! Sure, we can have the incentive of being accepted to our dream colleges—but that should be in the back of our heads and not the main focus.

It is truly the little things that count. If we take our high school experience day by day, we won’t pay so much attention to the intimidating anticipation of college acceptances. Tough times will inevitably come, but there will be many wonderful times to come too! Let’s make an effort to not rush junior year and support ourselves and our peers every step of the way. Things will fall into place, one way or another.

–Katie