A Nightmare on Postoak
Photo Credit: David Utt
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June 17, 2010 • Ben Mitchell, Co- Editor-in-Chief
Filed under Opinion
High school is supposed to be a time of discovery and learning. Students are cultivated into intelligent, thoughtful young adults who are ready to face their futures. Junior year is not one of those times. It is marked by furious last minute work, massive papers, no-nonsense teachers, and the infamous Oral History Project. Not only is it academically painful, but junior year is mentally stressful as well. College tours, SATs, and other post-High School issues dominate the life of a junior, and every choice they make seems to impact their educational future. Despite all these things, surviving junior year at St. Andrew’s is tough, but doable.
The work load is what truly defines junior year. Teachers now expect students to have mastered the skills of writing, math, critical thinking, and critical reading. They mercilessly pile homework onto their pupils, crushing them under mountains of reading, writing, and problems. Some English classes this year were required to answer upwards of 80 questions about a single novel while planning and writing an essay about that novel. Both assignments were due on the same day.
Math teachers demand that juniors keep up with their homework, constantly reminding them that “this is the year that counts!” History teachers do not budge on Oral History Project deadlines, and expect college-level researching and writing out of their students. AP U.S. History doesn’t even halt learning during the project, requiring their students to juggle large amounts of work along with their other courses.
Language and Science teachers expect the same level of diligence and focus in their classes, declaring that their course is equally as important. Many juniors will be found running to a classmate in the morning, asking, “Did you get the physics? I ran out of time! I was up so late doing my other homework,” or “We have a test today? I had no time to study last night anyway.”
Poise is essential to surviving junior year, and without it one could be crushed by the academics. But all the academics are driven by one huge factor: college.
College is the biggest fear of all juniors. If you get a C in a class, on a test, on a paper, it’s as if God himself has damned you to a life of flipping burgers. Juniors plan their entire lives around the college process, thinking to themselves, “Will this look good on my application?” Clubs, community service, and other extra-curricular programs are all picked, more or less, to aid a student in the college process.
Junior Jessica Figueroa said, “I applied to summer programs at a lot of colleges to experience the application process, to some extent, and to give me something to put down on my real application.”
Juniors spend weekend mornings or week nights at SAT prep classes to ensure they get a good score on the test that millions of students across the country lose sleep over. Some choose the ACT, but even that choice is complex and nerve-wracking. Picking schools to tour, looking for strong programs, and determining what school is “right for you” can drive some juniors insane.
Parents, too, can be the bane of a junior. They are always there to remind their children what they aren’t doing right, not well enough, or enough of to get into school. They constantly hover over their children, pointing out their grades and teacher comments as if constant reminders will be a strong enough motivator. Usually, it isn’t.
So how does one confront junior year? To combat the beast that is the 11th grade, a student must be prepared to sacrifice weekends, favorite TV shows, hobbies, sleep, and their vices in order to succeed. They must listen to their teachers, advisors, and (sometimes) their parents. They must trust that when they are lost in the algebra forest, their calculator can save them from the physics dragons. They have to get that one can’t always mention Howard Zinn, especially if only to say a certain group consisted of “active agents.” They have to understand that tone equals diction, diction equals word choice, and that one can always write about how society tortures the soul.
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