As a student, everyone tells you that junior year is the hardest year of high school. “It’s the one colleges look at the most,” they say, stressing the fact that grades matter more and your course load should be rigorous. What they don’t tell you, however, is that senior year is 10 times as hard, and anyone who believes this rumor has either blocked the chaos of 12th grade from their mind, or just didn’t experience it to its fullest extent.

Oct. 15 was the first deadline for college applications. Students who chose to apply Early Action had to submit their applications by 11:59 p.m. Monday evening. Alongside these university dates were scholarship deadlines as well, including detailed applications for full-ride packages such as the Morehead-Cain scholarship to UNC Chapel Hill. During the days leading up to these deadlines, I witnessed a certain level of anxiety among my peers I had never seen before.

Sunday night, as the clock slowly ticked toward Oct. 15, I watched a sense of impending doom fall upon my friends. Everyone was frantically searching for people to edit their essays, look over their applications, or even act as a source of support and validation as the realization that their acceptance was out of their hands slowly settled in. I, too, was among these frantic, last-minute candidates, staying up into the wee hours of the morning to hammer out my final essays.

When applying for college, I have found that everything that could possibly go wrong, always goes wrong. For me, I spent three hours working on a scholarship application, only to come back after a break to find my session timed out and all my previous work deleted. But, I have learned that with senior year, you just have to roll with the punches. On top of all of this extra college work, one must also keep up with their regular classwork, turning in papers on time and submitting assignments to be graded. To find a balance is incredibly difficult, and sacrifices must be made in order to ensure that both your school work and applications are up to par. For all the rising seniors out there, I just want you to be prepared. While senior year is tough, it can be done, but only if you’re willing to rise to the challenge.