Stereotypically speaking, it’s mostly said around the world that junior year (11th grade) is the hardest year in high school. When interviewing my sister Mariana Guzmán, I asked her about how she felt about this opinion and what factors made her come to this conclusion. One of the big things that I mentioned to her is how Baldwin School of Puerto Rico is one of the two IB schools in Puerto Rico, making the junior year transition 100% harder for the students. I asked her about how the IB Program makes it any harder. The main focus of this interview was how a regular high school student in an IB school feels during their junior year and how they manage their academics, social life, and extracurricular activities. In this interview, we will get to know Mariana Guzmán and how she has felt throughout 11th grade with only three months to go until the end of the school year.
Do you consider junior year to be the hardest year in high school?
“Yes, because you are just worried about the future at the same time as you are living in the present. For example, you need good grades to get into university in the future, but right now in the present, you are studying to get those good grades.”
- What are some factors that lead you to this conclusion?
- – Extracurricular activities
- – Social-life
- – Self-imposed anxiety
- – Pressures about the future
- How has the first year in the DP Program affected your perspective on academics?
“The first year in the DP Program has shown me that things won’t come easy. If you have always been smart, that won’t necessarily assure good grades. You have to work hard to get accomplishments. That’s the big BANG in junior year when it comes to academics.”
- What clubs are you in within the school community, and why did you decide to join those clubs?
“G-stem because I like engaging in the scientific community while also teaching others about it. I find it amusing.”
“NHS, because I find community service important, and it’s really important to take care of people around you.”
“Astronomy Club because I’ve always liked astronomy, and I find it nice to have it as an extracurricular activity for fun.”
Has student council ever been an option for you?
“Yes, […] I was Representative in the 5th grade, Secretary in the 8th grade, and President now in the 11th grade.”
- Has choosing the DP Program increased your workload in school?
“Yes, about 20% because I feel like there’s always something due.” When she finishes something there is a new thing to get done. “It’s very trying because of the increased workload and how everything needs to be quality work because everything counts.”
If you are planning on being on the Student Council next year, are you worried that it will take more effort and time than this year? Do you think that it can affect your grades?
“No, it does not affect my grades because I know how to manage my time well. I’m planning on running for the Student Council again next year because I want to finish the year with my class. Since I was part of planning the 8th grade graduation, I want to do the same but with our senior year graduation. I know that it is going to take more effort and time. After all, it’s the most important year for the Student Council because it’s going to be our last year – our shortest but longest year, so it’s the year that counts the most. And we want to end it off with a BANG and that’s the Student Council’s job.”
- Do you know what you want to study in college?
“I want to study biomedical engineering because I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger, and I found out that to be an astronaut, you needed to have a degree in certain fields, biology being one of them. As I learned more about biology and the different things you can do with biology, I started identifying my wants in the future and matching them [to] a certain degree. I found out that instead of doing plain biology, I wanted to create advancements, and I wanted to help people. So that is why I determined that I wanted to do biomedical engineering because I wanted to create new things with the help of technology to help people medically.”
- Does knowing what you want to study in college help you pick what classes you want to take in the DP Program, HL or SL?
“Yes, 100% because if I wanted to study bio-med, then I needed to study HL Bio. And also, [it] helped me determine the math class that I needed to take because for certain degrees, you need to have certain backgrounds. I also took HL Psychology because it was a science-centered class.”
- The DP program requires an Extended Essay to be completed throughout your junior and senior years, how is it going; what is it about?
“My Extended Essay is a biology experiment testing bacterial proliferation when exposed to artificial sweeteners. It’s going well because I have the majority of my background research done, and next week I am starting the actual experiment. In that aspect, I am pretty ahead compared to other bio papers.”
Why did you decide to do it on that specific topic?
“Because I consume artificial sweeteners every day, and I have also been doing artificial sweeteners research since last year in my chemistry class, so I wanted to expand my knowledge on it to see what happens when you consume these types of sugars.”
- What extracurricular activities do you do?
“All my clubs, G-Stem, NHS, Astronomy Club, and Student Council. I work out, and I go to El Conservatorio to sing and play the piano. [During the] first semester, I’m on the volleyball team, and second semester I’m on the softball team.”
When did you start these hobbies?
“Conservatorio: since Quarantine. [And] I’ve been playing volleyball since the 2nd grade, up until 9th grade when at the beginning of the second semester I tore my ACL. I needed to get surgery, and […] was in recovery for like a year. Because of the trauma, I didn’t join club volleyball again but continued in school volleyball because I didn’t want to leave it completely.”
Do you enjoy this extracurricular?
“I love them all, if I didn’t I wouldn’t be doing them.”
Is it hard to manage your time with this extracurricular activity?
“Sometimes I struggle with it, especially since the SAT is coming up, but I always manage to get everything I need to be done, and that’s the important part.”
- What are some methods that you use to help you manage your time?
“My calendar. It’s a digital calendar. My entire life is in that calendar and I try to plan everything accordingly, that way I know when I can have meetings and appointments, or have time to myself. I like keeping digital notebooks because, for me, it’s easier to have access to everything I need easily.”
- How does the DP Program affect your balance between your social life and academic life?
“I had to sacrifice many social events to prioritize my academics. Still, I try to make time to be with my friends and be by myself without having to worry about school because I think it is really important to have a balance between school and social life; […] if [I’m] not healthy, the anxiety will consume me.
Has it been a struggle for you to maintain that balance?
No, it hasn’t been a struggle at all because I know what to prioritize and when to prioritize it.
- Do you take SAT practice classes?
“I do. I take them whenever I’m available or the teachers are.”
When is your first exam? Do you feel confident about how your results have been during the practice tests?
“My first exam is next week. I think I’m gonna get something close to my goal score (1400) because I’ve been working on it for so long and hard. I’m very nervous about my first SAT exam because I have high expectations.”
- Being a Junior means that you start looking for colleges with your interest; have you gone on college visits? Which colleges have piqued your interest? Does this in any way increase or decrease the level of stress that you are experiencing this year?
“I have gone on three college visits to Washington DC. I visited GW, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins. The ones that piqued my interest were Johns Hopkins academically, and overall GW. This kinda increased my level of stress because I need to visualize how I will fit in when I am visiting, and I am scared that [I] won’t find THE college that I want.”
- Out of all the questions that I have asked you, do you still believe that this stereotype is true: Junior Year is the hardest year in high school?
“Yes.”
Do you believe that Senior Year is going to be more challenging than this year in high school?
“I believe in many ways it’s going to be different as it is a transition period. But academically, this year, I think, junior year is harder. Just because I think that junior year is more of a build-up for college transcripts, it’s the most recent grades you send in and the person you are now when presenting yourself to colleges. So to me, overall, senior year is going to be more scary, but junior year is more challenging.
Overall when interviewing Mariana, I gained clarity on the stereotype that “Junior Year is the hardest year in high school”. I learned that, for her at least, it is 100% true. She feels stressed and overworked, and the IB Program is not making it any easier for her. The IB Program is supposed to challenge the students, and it is working. But Mariana being the overachieving student that she is, puts in the hard work, and knowing what she wants to be in the future gives her an upper hand when it comes to making important decisions in her classes. She knows to prioritize her science-based classes so when she goes to apply for science majors in university, they see that she has already been focused on that subject for a while. Also, part of being in these last years in high school is having a social life and enjoying it. It took her some time to get used to balancing school and fun, but she said that she learned how to manage it. She knows when to sacrifice some fun activities with her friends since she needs to study. I feel like overall, the stereotype being proven right is more of a good thing than a bad thing because it can give more of a warning, or a heads-up, to the upcoming Juniors, so they know more or less what’s to come or how to start preparing for the “hardest” school year. Maybe in a couple of years, people will feel somewhat different, or maybe even now. This interview was given from the perspective of a Junior at Baldwin School of Puerto Rico who is in multiple clubs, has multiple extracurricular activities, has a 4.0 GPA, and somehow finds a way to have a social life and some time to herself. We conclude, is “Junior Year the hardest year in high school?”… Yes.
