From the day I arrived at Magnet as a freshman, I was reminded over and over how junior year would be the worst year of high school. Anytime students would complain about the workload, a teacher would promptly remind them this work is nothing compared to what is to come. “Junior year is so hard.””If you can’t handle this, then you will never survive junior year.” “TOK and Thesis will be the worst classes you ever take.” These were all familiar phrases to little freshman me.

Fast forward two years and the day had finally arrived to start the dreaded third year of my high school career. Admittedly, there were a few times when I believed what teachers and former students had warned me about before. I was so stressed that I wanted to transfer schools and I cursed the day that I decided to attend Magnet. However, I made it through the many ROL deadlines, AP exams, and finals, and the terrible year was over before I knew it. I thought that I had passed the peak of Magnet hardship, but little did I know that the worst was yet to come.

After a summer of procrastinating doing my thesis (word to the wise: don’t do this), I was so excited to start senior year. We would finally be on top of the AMHS food chain, and we would run spirit week. I was sadly mistaken. There are three main reasons that first semester of senior year is the hardest part of anyone’s Magnet career. The first is thesis. Unlike junior year, you don’t have a thesis class where a teacher forces you to get things done and divides the work into very specific deadlines. You also don’t have any class time, other than focus, to get thesis work done. Although thesis class seems like a burden, you miss it once it’s gone. The second reason is the workload in general. Most seniors take more APs than they have any other year, and there are countless hours of homework that come with them. The final reason first semester of senior year is so terrible is college applications. They would be hard to keep up with alone, but add thesis, homework, essays, tests, and extracurricular activities and it makes a terrible 18 weeks.

I’m sorry, juniors, but not really. If I had to endure this terrible first semester of senior year, then you do too. Good luck; it’ll be over soon enough.