When most people think of senior year in high school, they think of the fun aspects: most notably prom, beach week, and of course, graduation day. However, senior year is not all rainbows and butterflies. In my opinion, it has been my hardest year thus far.

To all the juniors and underclassmen reading this, buckle up because high school only gets tougher from here.

Beginning back in summer, all incoming seniors were required to complete a “brag sheet.” This sheet was where you list down all the activities that you’ve done in high school, including clubs you’ve taken part in, special accomplishments you’ve made, and your opinions on very open ended questions.

Once completed, this sheet is given to your counselor, giving them additional information about yourself after the initial senior meeting you two have in early summer. These are reviewed in order for them to write a college recommendation for you.

Once the brag sheet is completed, then begin college applications. The average high school senior applies to about 6-8 colleges/universities. Others apply to either less or more, just depending on their preferences.

Personally, I applied to eight total universities. Each college application has about one major essay, usually about 500 words or more, and then about two to three personal statements or short answers, with only about 250 words or less.

These applications all have specific deadlines, especially in the fall, for early action/early decision, depending on the school. Most of the colleges have deadlines either on the same date, such as November 1, or around the same time period, within a few weeks or so.

Adding on to college applications, many seniors apply for scholarships as college is pretty expensive, nowadays. There are existing scholarship applications that do not require students to write essays for them, yet most applications do.

As well as completing college applications, most senior retake either the SAT or the ACT, or both in early fall of their senior year.

Studying for these is mostly done over the summer, as there is a lot of extra time for completing work, depending on a student’s time management skills.

Starting this school year, MCPS removed midterm and final exams from its curriculum, yet replaced them with Required Quarterly Assessments (RQA’s) for most classes. These RQA’s are big projects, tests, and/or labs, so studying for these do take up quite a bit of time. These assessments are given once per quarter, meaning there are four per year, and take up 10% of your final quarter grade for the class.

Senior year is even tougher for those students that take Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses. Almost the entire year is focused on passing the final exams, scheduled to be taken in May.

As we all know, most seniors do tend to slack off a little bit more than usual, after they get accepted into colleges of their choice, due to “senioritis.” Take it from me, this is truly a disease for most second-semester 12th graders, and overcoming it takes perseverance.

Though senior year may be the year you end up having the most fun, there is lots of work involved and should not be taken lightly. The thought of being in college slowly consumes the will of seniors to keep working hard, yet powering through in the end makes the whole rest of your high school career worth it.