By Daniel Manetin

Senior year has a reputation in any high school. Most students spend three years hearing that it is the easy, fun year where things finally slow down, and by the time junior year wraps up and summer begins, that idea can make preparation feel unnecessary, even a little ridiculous. But current seniors who have already lived through it tell a different story, one where the summer before senior year is less of a break and more of a window of opportunity, and missing it tends to come with a cost.

For Om Kamal [12], the wake-up call came early into the school year. Looking back, he pointed to both academic habits and timing as things he would have handled differently, and said that “Honestly, I think probably studying a little more… because I’ve been swamped with work. Another thing I would have done is probably register for part of my dual enrollment classes a little more earlier, because I basically did them a little later than I should have.” Additionally, part of what made that adjustment harder was how far off his expectations had been going in. “I always believed that senior year was just no work, just sitting there doing nothing… But I learned that it’s kind of just not true,” Om admitted. Still, he found something that helped him stay on top of it: building in personal time. “One of the bigger steps was taking that time also to myself, because while I was studying, I took a lot more time to myself than I would normally, so I came into the year a lot more relaxed than I would have any other year,” he said. In the middle of everything piling up, giving himself room to reset made a large difference in managing time and stress.

Where Om found his footing through stress management, Shail Avashia [12] took a different approach over the summer, starting with college research before the pressure actually began. “The main thing I did last summer was I kind of researched the colleges that I really wanted. I had an idea of where I wanted to go, but I needed to make sure,” he explained, mentioning that the groundwork paid off when it came to actually putting applications together. “One thing is creating a Common App account where most of the places that you’re going to apply to are, and another thing is the deadlines. Keeping track of the deadlines, you know, college final deadlines, early action versus regular decision and all that,” Shail said. Even so, he was quick to mention what he would still go back and change, saying “One thing I wish I would have done is start on my essays earlier. I did look at the prompts, but I didn’t really do much with them until a little bit later on, which caused me to be rushing all of the essays.” Even with a proactive summer, there was still something that slipped through the cracks.

Rising seniors can come into the year very differently, but will often land in the same place of wishing they had done a little more, a little sooner. Senior year is not impossible, and it is not the trap some make it out to be either, but it does not leave much room for catching up once things get moving. Whether it is getting ahead on applications, building better study habits, or just taking the summer seriously, the time is there before senior year starts.