You peer through a glass door and are greeted with warm faces and a bowl of candy as you face a room you will surely spend some time in for the rest of this year as well as next year: the college counseling office. As a junior, this process is new, intimidating, and infamous to mostly everyone. This year, these warm faces are digitized and met through a computer, and the candy bowl is nowhere to be found. 

       The college process is new to juniors every year, often, with the exception of a sliver of previous knowledge coming from overheard conversations between your siblings and parents. 

Not only is the college process new to juniors this year in the challenging way that it is to juniors every year, but, the online element is new to everyone including the junior grade heads, college admissions officers, the college counselors, the juniors themselves, and more. 

Some juniors find that a good way to deal with the added tasks of college counseling is to focus on the way you look at the process. Junior Xander Mesires, suggests reminding yourself of the intentions of the college counseling team– to benefit the students. Junior Ruby Radis has a similar mindset, nudging those going through the college process to remember to calm yourself down because in the end, “you’re going to be fine.”

Junior Elsie Rattner emphasizes the importance of organization and preparation. “Junior year is not the time to stress about the actual process,” Rattner said, “Don’t go overboard.” Radis and Mesires agree that it is not worth worrying, and Mesires emphasizes how important it is for juniors to maintain their grades but hopes everyone knows that spending hours stressing will not help. 

This year has brought a variety of differing types of challenges to students. “I feel that the largest effect that online school has had is that we don’t get to have a close connection and develop a relationship with the college counseling team,” Rattner said.  Rattner views the lack of important relationships as one of her main concerns, but Mesires mentions his concerns around looking around and learning about the actual colleges. However, he is optimistic that he will soon be able to go through this in a less abnormal manner as time goes on. 

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been small, but noticeable, amounts of curriculum that were not included this year. “I definitely think this year of online schooling will affect us all for the rest of our lives,” Radis said. 

When diving into this long, important, process, it is important to remember that it flows differently for everyone. Radis believes that everyone ends up doing something, but that something looks different for everything.