High school is a difficult time of any teenager’s life, but junior year is something else.

Junior year is the infamous year that the seniors warn you about. The year that you go into knowing you’re going to struggle at something no matter what it is. The year that is the most complicated, busy, and stressful year.

Seniors have been through it and will tell you exactly the same thing. While the seniors still have various struggles of their own, there are many struggles that they left behind in their senior year.

For starters, college.

As if college wasn’t already scary enough. Junior year is the year when you are supposed to know who you want to be, where you want to go, and how you’re going to do it. College meeting after college meeting, scholarship offers after scholarship offers, and campus visits after campus visits.

This is terrifying for lots of people who don’t necessarily know everything yet. You’re expected to, but you don’t. While the seniors have already gone through all the essays and late nights, the juniors are just beginning theirs.

Who really knows how to fill out a college application? Where do you get them? What colleges are worth looking at? The questions bubble up in the heads of every girl and boy who is being thrown into the confusing mix of life.

Soon people will be adults and its junior year that that starts to sink in for a lot of people. Being completely on your own is a scary thing, but not knowing how and what to do to survive on your own is even scarier.

Junior year is a door that opens up into harder work, AP classes, and big tests like the SATs. Suddenly everyone is pushing you to take impressive classes, so you can dazzle the colleges in hopes that they will choose you over someone who is working just as hard and is just as stressed as you.

Junior year is a race that isn’t about crossing the finish line first but about placing the highest you can manage to place. There is technically no winning in this race either.

When junior year rolls around and the college pamphlets start to come in the mail, there is only one thing you can do that will help you out more than any counselor with a fancy website can: Take it one step at a time.