My Honest Junior Year

I’ll be honest, when people told me that junior year would be hell, I mostly just shrugged them off, thinking I’d be the exception. Things are rarely as bad as people make them out to be.

I’ll be honest. They were right - junior year was hell. (Although hell is a term I use lightly, things are rarely as bad as people make them out to be.) In this moment of June, when all has been said and done, it’s so easy to forget - or better yet, ignore - all the not-so-good moments I had this year.

It is very hard to be honest, but I would never be able to address mental health without being an utter hypocrite if I continued to refuse to acknowledge my own trials, especially during the long stretch of months in the middle of this past school year. To be clear, I’ve never seen a professional, and I can’t call it what it is when, quite frankly, I don’t really know what it is, but I’m beginning to realize that my mental health is nevertheless valid, and that the many bad days I had this past winter were still very real. It is all too tempting to feel ashamed about your emotions, but, moreover, it can make you feel incredibly vulnerable knowing that other people might know that your life isn’t always sunshine and roses - that there are lots of negative emotions involved too.

I like to think that I’ve gotten really good at showing people a very perfect pinhole of my life. Most of us have. To almost everyone, my junior year probably seemed pretty successful: somehow managing to get good grades and balance a multitude of extracurriculars, all while looking put-together. In that pinhole, I am smart, independent, driven. And in many ways, these things are pretty true.

Just outside of that pinhole, however, were the late nights, the even later nights, the self-doubt, the lunchlessness, the self-induced pressure — and this is just considering my life only in relation to school. I was sad more than anyone really knew, and whether that was because of seasonal depression, factors related to school or other things going on in my life, or a combination of all three and more, I don’t really know. Between feeling the blues, at times I felt terribly overwhelmed, with no other way to describe it except as junior year beating down on me, all while saddled with as many insecurities as the next person. I guess in reflection, my junior year clearly had a lot of circumstances that were prime breeding grounds for an unhealthy mental state.

To the underclassmen reading this — don’t panic, my junior school year came out of a lot of my own choices, which means you can learn from my mistakes! School is a relatively more controllable element in your life, so taking preventative measures where you can is awfully important. Firstly, don’t feel obligated to drive yourself crazy. My best advice is to prioritize sleep. A general word to everyone, really, including myself, it’s freakin’ important to take care of yourself! If you feel like you’ve overbooked yourself, take a step back. If you’re doing something just because you feel like you need it to look good for college, ask yourself if it’s truly worth the sacrifice you’ll make in return, or if you’re making the right commitment. Even if all your escapades come from a place of authenticity, which I like to consider to be true for myself, it might be better in the long run to slim down on your schedule just a little. Easier said than done, though I’m working on it for senior year. More than that, however, I’ve come to realize that when you take away the impossibly high expectations and replace them with the zen understanding that things always work out as they should in the end — writing this in June, I can say that this has been true, even for this year — suddenly things become a lot more manageable.

Admittedly, my junior year may have, in some ways, sucked, but I’m still proud of myself for the things I’ve accomplished. For all the lows, there were also plenty of good days, wonderful opportunities, and experiences of happy, healthy growth. Those highs are gratifying enough for me to look back on junior year without too much regret, but I am certainly armed with resolve to make better, healthier choices in the future. And I certainly think it’s important to start believing that acknowledging the other sides to my life doesn’t undermine my success.

Beyond the undeniable stigma around mental health, there’s also a stigma around perfection, and an equal stigma around imperfection, that so badly needs to be torn down. Social media exacerbates this culture by tenfold. I’m inevitably a contributor, so for me to continue to post on this blog with some integrity, I think it’s important that I at least try to actively acknowledge my own imperfections.

In any case, I made it through junior year, so cheers to the end of junior year, and to the start of summer 2018!