With two older brothers and a soon to be sister-in-law, all I have heard since I got into high school is that junior year is the hardest and most important year of your high school career. This idea has made me dread being a junior ever since my first day of freshman year. It also doesn’t help that in every teen movie I watched as a kid, by junior year everyone already knows what college they want to go to and what career they want to pursue. And now, 2020 has thrown us a curveball in the form of the Coronavirus Pandemic. 

This worldwide catastrophe has made being a high school student, or being any student, 10x harder, and now I have to get through the most difficult and important year of my high school career 100% virtually. We’re barely four weeks into the school year and I’m already overwhelmed by everything. 

One idea that has always been stressful for me is the future. Mainly because I have no idea what I want the future to look like. But by now I’m expected to have it all figured out, or at least have a general idea. I’m only sixteen, how am I supposed to know what college I want to go to, what career I want to have, and what I want to do with the rest of my life when my life has barely begun? It was absurd to ask this much of kids when life was normal, but now we have to make all these big decisions about our futures during one of the most chaotic times in history. 

Another thing that has been overwhelming is the amount of homework some teachers assign. It feels like they have forgotten how many hours there are in a day and that we still need to have enough time to sleep and eat. They are just piling on all these assignments because they think that since we’re home we have all this free time when, in actuality, we don’t. 

Students still have other responsibilities like work, family, sports, having time for themselves, and still having to do work for other classes. So asking them to add on hours and hours of homework on top of that is pretty frustrating. 

I think we can all agree that high school is already a pretty stressful and crazy time without having to factor in Covid-19. It’s even crazier for me to think that in two years I’m going to be graduating. Especially because I’m so unprepared for the future. This year has definitely had its moments when I seriously consider just dropping out and getting my GED. But I guess it could be worse, and I’m sure as the year goes on it will be.