With the start of our junior year, students of the Class of 2020 made the transition from the ramps and windows of NAI to the stairs and dimness that is NASH, the final building of the North Allegheny school system. 

Truly, the beginning of junior year really felt like the beginning of high school. While 9th and 10th grade felt more like a harder middle school, junior year felt different. Many of us now have the freedom of a driver’s license. College is no longer a hazy notion in the distant future but a looming threat. Some of us will even be able to vote for the next president of the United States next November. With that, the ability to join the military and serve on juries will be opened up. Junior year is the transition from young adult to full adult.

I would have to say, junior year was the most eventful school year of my life. The pressure to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do finally became a question that I could no longer push off. Visits to colleges and endless hours on Naviance trying to find a college and major that suited me filled my weekends. While I have a general idea of what I want my major to be in and what college I would like to attend, I’m sure that decision will change hundreds of times between now and when I graduate.

I also felt that my classes had a much greater impact on my career decision making. Going into junior year, I knew I wanted to study some sort of social studies course. During the year, I was able to choose from a much wider spectrum of classes, which let me explore more in-depth topics I was interested in. Now at the end of the year I can say with a decent amount of confidence that I want my higher education to have some form of economics or business in it. Whether it was my love of the class or my amazing economics teacher, these last nine months have taught me to love the inner workings of markets and policy.

My social life also became way more eventful during my junior year. I had my first relationship and went through my first big fight with the group of friends I’ve been with since freshman year. I’d like to think that from these experiences I’ve grown as a person and have actually become closer to my friends. These experiences have taught me how to handle situations as an adult and to watch what I say when people are and are not around.

Senior year is often seen as the most important year of high school. I would argue that junior year is a much more critical year. Junior year is the big transition into becoming an adult who participates in the functions of democracy, who labors in the workforce, who is able to transport themselves to social gatherings and school. Junior year is a critical period when we look back on what our lives have been and look ahead to what our lives may be.