BY LUCIA CORREA
With constant new students entering CCHS as freshmen, sophomores and juniors working up the ranks and seniors getting ready for graduation, the common question rests: what year of high school is the hardest?
The usual impression is that junior year is the hardest, due to SAT testing and wrapping up most of one’s graduation requirements, and then senior year is the easiest because usually by then you have everything wrapped up and are ready for college.
“Freshman and senior year are probably the easiest years,” sophomore Anthony Scholl said. “Cause that’s when you start and leave high school and usually you wanna end high school with easier classes.”
While this may be true for some, many freshmen hit the ground running by taking Advanced Placement (AP) and Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) courses to get scholarships and a high GPA.
“I am taking AICE General Paper this year and plan to take more AICE classes in the future,” freshman Alexa Zamora said. “I’m hoping to get all the stressful classes out of the way before senior year so it will be an easy year.”
“This year I took AICE General Paper and AP Human Geography,” freshman Ella Shuch said.
“It’s definitely the hardest year I’ve had so far; however, I expect each year to be harder.”
Agreeing with how it just keeps on getting harder is junior Niya Spigner who is currently taking AP History, AP Biology, AP Language, and AICE Business.
“I think this year is the hardest because of all the AP classes, it’s a lot of work,” Spigner said.
There are also those who accept the challenge in order to do better academically and be open to future academic opportunities.
“I plan on taking the most advanced classes I’m eligible [for],” junior Emanuelle Menendez said.
“So, I doubt it’s gonna be as easy as staying on the yellow brick road.”
Moving on to senior year, there are mixed feelings on how hard it’ll be.
“I think senior year will be both the hardest and easiest,” Shuch said. “It’s the last step in the education plan we’ve always mapped out for us.”
Although some students are not taking any more advanced classes, they find the school year to be stressful enough as it is.
“I don’t take AP or AICE classes,” Scholl said. “I sometimes can feel overwhelmed though, especially with tests and work.”
Moving on to those graduating in a few months, seniors are starting to feel the coercion of dealing with classes, starting college soon and paying for it.
“Except for Ceramics, all my courses are advanced and all the pressure of applying to college and scholarships doesn’t help either,” senior Alejandra Flores said.
“I thought that when you are applying for college all that matters is the GPA and test scores, but no, you also need a lot of AP classes and I mean a lot,” Flores said. “Nobody told me that, so I’m upset; they should inform us better.”
Even though there are all these assumptions on which year will be the easiest or hardest, in the end it depends on what students decide and how they face it.
“It’s hard, but not impossible to do,” Menendez said. “So this school year may be challenging, but not impossible to overcome.”
