As Campolindo students start settling back into school after a long, relaxing summer, one thing is prominent on seniors’ minds: college. Managing schoolwork, planning for the future, and participating in extracurriculars is a tricky situation as seniors have to balance their priorities. With AP classes and writing essays for Common App, seniors find themselves crunched for time.
Senior Clara Rhame shares how she juggles school and the college process: “I try to set aside an hour a day to just focus on my Common App essay or other supplemental essays. I’ve been slowly making my way through the Common App while also doing homework.”
As students start thinking about college, the thought of getting a personal college counselor goes through some minds. Senior Ava Madrigal appreciates that she got a college counselor early on and thought she “was really lucky because [her] college counselor helped [her] to get everything done in the summer.”
The College and Career Center, located at E13, is a cost-effective way to get help with college. Many students visit the College and Career Center because it is “a good resource especially for people who can’t afford a separate counselor,” Madrigal says. Junior Sierra Worster mentions “I definitely do want to start talking to [the college and career counselors] more and use that as a resource.”
The term “senioritis” reappears every year to explain the feeling after the grueling process of college applications paired with difficult classes. Senioritis describes how unmotivated seniors are to get up and go to school or do schoolwork. Rhame mentioned that she started feeling early onset senioritis and, “[school] kind of all turns into a giant burnout.”
Seniors are not the only ones starting to feel the pressure, as juniors enter a difficult, important year and start to think about college. Worster expresses how stressed she is only four weeks in: “I take three APs and two honors, and it’s just a lot of work.”
No matter how hard the year can be, seniors have advice for the juniors. Madrigal’s advice to juniors is “do your homework.” As juniors push through this difficult year and prepare for the next, one thing is for sure: take care of your mental health. Rhame understands the struggles of junior year and advises to “take a break and you don’t need to take seven APs and do four clubs and three sports to be happy.”
