There are just over 10 weeks until the first of May and I’m already nervous. The reason why I’m counting down to May instead of the end of the school year in June is because, this year, May is an extremely important month for me — it’s the end of these long months of test preparation, with exams and college admission exam dates such as the ACT all falling during this part of the year.

In all my classes, the workload is picking up faster than any time in the year, especially in my advanced classes. On top of that, my activities outside of school are also beginning to pick up. I’m in the pit orchestra for our school musical, for instance, which means that I’ll be at rehearsals every day until 8 or 9 p.m., beginning two weeks from now.

Really, we high school students do it all — much more so than people might expect. And why? Well, because of passion: we do these activities because we are passionate about them. We join sports teams because we’re passionate about playing the sport, we participate in the musical because we love music and the arts, and — though it seems to be the opposite, sometimes — we take difficult courses because we’re passionate about learning. We tackle that workload every day, prepare for those tests, because we want to show that we want to learn, and that we won’t give up easily.
And passion is so important — it keeps us going from day to day, because even though we might be up late trying not to fall behind in work, we love what we do. And it helps us, too. Colleges love to see students intensely devoting their time to their passion. (It makes for a great application essay subject, so I’ve heard.)

So for all of you doing what you love — sports, art, music, academics, anything at all — don’t lose sight of that fact. There’s definitely an intense time commitment in taking on so many things at once, and sometimes it might feel like you can’t handle it all. At these times, just remember why you’re doing all this — because you’re passionate about it. Even if it’s hard to believe at times, if we weren’t passionate about the things we do, we’d have burned out long ago and stopped trying. And this is especially true for everyone loading up with classes and college entrance exams. We’ve made it more than half the year already; our commitment to taking these tests shows that we’re devoted to learning and challenging ourselves.

Everyone has a passion. Some have more, and they might be very different ones, but everyone has one; we just need to find it. And once we’ve found it, the path that we want to take through life will begin to clear up.