The Reality of Being a Senior

Amelia Holt-Smith '26  ~  November 2025

I woke up at six. I put my uniform on in the dark. I looked at my planner. I met with a college representative who talked about SAT score bands and the Common App and predicted admission rates. I got my AP Biology test back. I take the SAT tomorrow. I have to meet with my guidance counselor. I have to finish this article. Being a senior is not what I thought it would be, mostly because I didn’t think of it at all.

I saw the seniors as constantly in the middle of something, high-minded and intense, never in study halls but always in guidance, vanishing periodically to go to Florida or Starbucks. I didn’t pay much attention to them, honestly; I was too focused on the difficulties of freshman or sophomore or junior year. I thought I had so much time before I ever had to be then.

At some point, by the close of my junior year, I started to recognize what being a senior required. You have to make arrangements for senior year to make arrangements for college: answer emails and fill out forms and choose classes for effect, for their appearance on your transcript. You have to do something with the emails, and refer back to the forms, and take the classes. You have to do all of that and live the same amount of life you did before. The difference is that what you do now affects you for the next four years or nine years or twenty-five years. Supposedly.

It’s far from all bad, though. The fact that I can go to college is a blessing, and so is having the kind of teachers and counselors Nardin does. Most of the seniors I asked described this year as “bittersweet” or “worth it.” The difficulty of it isn’t anyone’s fault. I chose to take AP Bio, and wake up at six A.M., and talk to the college rep. I chose to write this article. The challenge of senior year is how much it asks you to choose, to do so knowing it will be worth it but never knowing exactly how.