For most people high school is considered to be the best four years of their lives. However, there are many ups and downs that occur throughout these years. Students experience a lot of changes with their bodies as well as changes in lifestyles, routines, and society. Depending on your experience, these changes can be positive or negative. 

Throughout these four years, students are exposed to different types of curriculums, grading, expectations, to name a few. While every year of high school has its fair share of stressors, what year is considered to be the most difficult?

According to sofi.com, many people have said that their junior year of high school is the hardest. Junior year is considered to be difficult because you are going to have to do a lot of work. Most people there in junior year also end up getting a job on top of being a student which can be very stressful. Junior year is also the year that most students start to prepare for their SAT/ACT tests. 

In most cases when students are applying to colleges and or universities, admission offices tend to focus more on a student’s junior year grades and involvement. 

Some people find sophomore year to be the hardest. This is mainly because freshman year is very easy for most people and then sophomore year students make a big jump in the classes they have, especially if they end up taking AP courses. Going from having zero AP courses to taking AP courses becomes very stressful. AP courses are quite rigorous and students usually end up having massive amounts of assignments throughout the year, and because the test is timed students face additional stress as well. 

Most students find their sophomore year to be the hardest because they felt like their teachers “babied” them most of the time. Then when the time comes and sophomore year approaches students feel as though they are hit with more work then they were expecting or used too. During sophomore year, students start to also have extracurriculars and other outside activities such as completing drivers ed and even getting their license, this causes students to struggle to learn how to balance all these activities along with their school work. 

I decided to ask two high school seniors and two recent high school graduates about what year of high school they found the hardest. They all did not wish to be named so I will refer to the two seniors as senior one and two, and they rest as person one and two. 

Question: What year of high school was the most challenging for you and why?

Senior 1: Personally, I found my junior year of high school to be the most difficult for me. Mainly because I was taking all honors classes and felt pressure to stay on top of all these classes. 

Senior 2: My junior year was the hardest for me. I felt that everyday, I constantly had homework to do or an essay to write or a math test to study for. It was hard balancing fun and work throughout the year. 

Person 1: My sophomore year of high school was the hardest for me. It was because I had math and Spanish during the same semester which made it super tough for me. 

Person 2: My hardest year was junior year because that’s when you begin getting many assignments and teachers start preparing you for college.. Also this is the time you start looking for volunteering opportunities meaning that you have to begin setting time apart from your schedule for these activities. This is also the time to start researching your career opportunities and what college suits you the best so senior year can go by easily.