How do you act like a Lower Mid? Is it the way you walk, the number of people you know, your stress level, or the amount of SAT prep you’re doing? As my sleep schedule unravels, I’ve started wondering why, just because I’m one year older, I’m suddenly expected to be wiser and perfectly prepared.

The workload has doubled and the expectations have, too. “You’re a Lower Mid now, you shouldn’t be making mistakes” or “You’re a Lower Mid now, you should already know what to do” are unrealistic standards. In my and many of my friends’ opinions, there was no preparation for the increase in work, and we are expected to know how to manage it immediately.

Lower Mid year is the year where everything you do becomes really important: your grades matter, your sports level matters, your extracurricular involvement matters. In Prep year, the upperclass students and adults reassured you, “You have a long time until college” or “You’re young, you don’t need to worry yet.” These statements stand in stark contrast to the realities of Lower Mid year, where everything you do feels like it will be scrutinized by colleges. There’s a sudden pressure to grow up and be prepared for the life ahead of us.

People talk about how the transition from Prep to Lower Mid year is hard—how much work they had in their Lower Mid year, how much their stress increased—but no one talks about how to handle it. After all, without having been prepared themselves, upperclass students can’t really guide you. Struggling with this transition is so normalized that staying up until 2:00 a.m. is something students laugh about.