This is it. You've made it. This is your fourth and final year of high school. You can finally be first in the lunch line and get the front row parking you have so rightfully earned. You are the ones the incoming freshman are now looking up to.
This is supposed to be the "best year of your life," but, if your senior year is to be anything like mine was, that might not always be the case. The pressure of choosing what you are going to do with the rest of your life is heavy on your shoulders. It's a scary feeling knowing that a year from now your life could be completely different (and it likely will be).
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Everyone around you is going to start asking where you're going to go to college, what you're going to major in, and it's perfectly OK to not have an answer. Maybe you don't even want to go to college, or at least not right after graduation, and that's OK too. Senior year is about exploration, figuring out who you are and who you want to be. It can be a terrifying journey to navigate, but it's one we all experience at one time or another. If you're unsure, that's normal. Many college students change their major more than once, and many people often change their career once or twice in their lifetime. I promise, you don't have to have it all figured out now.
I let the stress of senior year get to me, and I wish I hadn't. I made myself physically ill multiple times worrying about scholarship applications, ACT scores, and getting that perfect GPA to secure my spot in the top bracket of my class. Looking back, I wish I would have just enjoyed my last year as a high school student instead of throwing myself headfirst into a deep pit of stress. This is your last year with your classmates, the people you spent four years (or in my case, your entire educational career thus far) with. You don't have to like them all, but you'll come to find that by the end of the year, you regret thinking that one girl was stuck up when she turns out to be a sweetheart. You'll wish you spent more time with these people, because there's a high chance that once you move that tassel on your cap, you might never see them again.
Go on multiple college visits. If you like a college, visit it again, because you might have different thoughts the second time around (I know I did). I visited my school of choice four times before I fully committed. And, if after that visit you find yourself wanting to skip the rest of high school and go straight to college, that's normal. You should be excited, but don't take for granted all of the amazing opportunities you have been given in high school.
Put together a solid résumé. Volunteer and join as many clubs as you can. Leadership experience stands out when you're applying for that big scholarship. With that, make sure to tune up your writing skills. Essays are a huge part of scholarship applications, and the better the writer you are, the better the chance you have.
So, stay calm. Fight off the senioritis. Remember that not everything is as big of a deal as you think it is. Hold your best friends close to you, because sometimes you all end up going to school in different states and only reunite over summer and holiday breaks. Value your free textbooks (seriously, those things are expensive). This is your last year, so make it count.
