aspiringmontilyet:

a lot of folks have started senior year or are going to start senior year soon, so here are some tips from someone who was a senior in high school longer ago than she’d like to admit

academics;

• start college applications early. like, now.
  
• the common app is your friend.
  
• same thing with scholarship applications. both scholarship and college applications are overwhelming, so start now.
• if one or more of your colleges doesn’t accept the common application, don’t panic! you don’t have to write your essay each time entirely from scratch; you can use the same one for multiple schools, just tweak it a bit to match whatever specific school it is.
  
• keep working hard. senioritis is 100% a thing, i promise you (especially near the end of the year). but push through it, keep up the work. keep it up even after your applications in, even after you’ve been accepted, even after scholarships are done, even after you’ve decided where you’re going and sent in your paperwork.
  
• breathe.
  
• i know it’s hard, it’s really hard, but try not to compare yourself to your friends or classmates. be kind to yourself and be kind to them, even if your best friend got into your dream school and you didn’t, even if they don’t even want to go to that school. look at the schools that did accept you - look at all the places that want you.
  
• what college you go to never has a do-or-die impact on the rest of your life. remember that. your life is not over, your career goals are not ruined if you don’t get into that one specific school.
  
• maybe don’t share with everyone what colleges you’re applying to, or what your sat/act scores are, or where you got in (until you decide where you want to go). there’s a little less pressure, a little less stress, when not everyone knows your business.
  
• you will have a meltdown at two in the morning, at least once. go to bed.

personal;

• studying is important, but so are friends.
  
• extracurriculars are important, but so are friends.
  
• this the last time you and all your friends are going to be in the same place at the same time without having to do an enormous amount of schedule juggling, so enjoy it. go to the movies, be ridiculous and go trick-or-treating one last time together, blow off a saturday night’s studying to have a sleepover and eat too much pizza.
  
• make mixes for each other, decorate lockers, give little gifts, remember why you’re friends with them. laugh.
• you will drift from your high school friends in college. this is a fact. not necessarily all of them, and maybe not even that far, but you will drift. so make the most of the time you have with your squad when they’re still your squad.
  
• go to senior events. breakfasts, sporting events, theater shows, recitals, awards, whatever. if it’s a senior thing, go to it. even if it’s not normally your thing. even if you have no idea who the people involved are. go to it. it might suck, but it might not, and either way - you’re only a senior once.
  
• be nice to freshmen. they’re very tiny and very scared, and you were them once.
• you only have one last first day of school. 
• you only have one last football game. one last band concert, one last choir practice, one last art show. go to these things, support your friends, support your classmates.
  
• emotions are going to hit you at the weirdest of times, trust me. ride it out. let yourself cry, let yourself be sad. even if you feel silly at the same time (i cried in the bathroom for ten minutes after my last spanish test), let it out.
  
• if you wear it, keep mascara in your bag for post-senior-sadness touch-ups.
  

above all, enjoy it. enjoy the year. enjoy the people, your friends, the ridiculous dress-up theme weeks. this is the last year you’re going to be a student in these halls, so remember it, enjoy it. don’t spend all your time studying or eyeball-deep in college applications.

when you’re homesick in your dorm room in a year and looking at pictures of your friends, what you’ll cling to aren’t the nights you stayed up until three in the morning cramming for ap bio, but that time you and your friends went to the lake for the weekend, or that time you all went and tp’ed someone’s house like you were twelve again, or that time that you all just sat around in study hall making goofy faces at each other and trying different snapchat filters. make memories with your friends.

look up and around you every so often, take a breath. smile. you made it to your senior year in high school.