I’m a junior. 

This fact hit me during our class meetings last week. I had previously heard that your junior year is the most difficult, but it hadn’t really hit me that this was my junior year.

I felt like I was supposed to be preparing for what lies ahead, and I’m not gonna lie to you: I was on the edge of a full freakout. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything that I needed to be doing. 

However, someone talked me off the ledge, and I’m here to save the rest of you who may be stressing out about your future because here’s the deal: your future isn’t here yet. You still have two years of high school to enjoy spending time with your friends and make new memories.

Please, don’t take this to mean that you should slack off and stop working altogether. I mean that you don’t need to stress out about not having applied for scholarships or colleges. Focus on keeping your grades up and taking care of yourself. 

So many high schoolers, especially as they get older, stress themselves out over their future. They’re so worried about where they’re going to go to college and what scholarships they’re going to get that they forget to enjoy high school.

It’s up to you if you want to spend these four years stressed out and worried about your future or if you want to spend time doing things that you love and making new memories.

If you’re reading this in your junior or senior year, let me remind you that it’s not too late to get involved. There are so many opportunities to get plugged into our school and its surrounding community.

Whether you’re an artist, an athlete or anything in between, find somewhere to get involved. Joining clubs and hanging around people who have similar interests is the easiest way to make friends, perhaps some that will last a lifetime. 

This is the year you should figure out how to manage your time if you haven’t figured it out yet. For many of you, jobs, sports, homework and social engagements all take up a big chunk of your time, and it can be stressful trying to balance all of those commitments.

Work on trying to find a balance between work and play. Because, as stressful as it is to think about, you’ll be going off to college in a year or two. You’ll especially need that ability to manage your time wisely when you’re off on your own, taking multiple classes that require adequate time for studying and homework, as well as a job to be able to pay for those classes. 

There are plenty of things that can and probably will stress you out about growing up. That’s what’s happening: we’re growing up. We’re having to learn how to handle life on our own and manage our time and our money.

There are so many things that we have to learn to do without the people who have been by our side from the day we were born. However, as I said before, don’t stress too much about it now. Don’t let the stress and the worry control what time you have left in high school. The future may not be here yet, but the present is; enjoy it.