Beginning Junior Year of College: Halfway Home

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So you've reached the midway checkpoint of your college career. How does it feel? Are you happy with where you are, or are you still drifting around looking for direction?

By the beginning of your junior year, you should be committed to a major, and you should have made at least some rudimentary decisions about where your life may be headed after college. If you are planning to go to medical school straight out of college, you'll need to have your basic premed requirements completed by the end of this year so that you can begin your MCAT preparation in earnest during the spring term. If law school is in your future, you'll need to make plans to prepare for the LSAT this spring. If you're hoping to get a job out of college, but don't know what that job is, this is the year you familiarize yourself with your career services office and all that it offers.

Your Junior Year Academic And Career Goals

So what have you learned about yourself academically during the first half of your college career?

What courses have you taken and loved, and what classes have you had trouble dragging yourself to attend every time? What distinctions can you draw from those experiences? Did you love your large lecture classes or hate them? Or did your enjoyment depend on the subject area or the professor? What introductory courses or subjects did you enjoy that you might want to explore more intensively?
Did you hear about any other subjects that your roommates or friends explored that you might want to check out?

Unless you are exploring a new area of interest, this is the year you will be leaving the large survey courses behind and starting to take smaller, more specialized classes, particularly in your major field of study. At many colleges and universities, it is also the year you first begin to qualify for certain seminar courses open only to upperclassmen or you first have the option to take independent study courses one-on-one with a professor in an area of interest to you. Have you yet encountered a professor with whom you might want to work in that capacity? Have you encountered a particularly interesting academic question or subject that might be the impetus for such an arrangement?

Your Junior Year Social Goals

Have you found a good group of friends? Have you met the kinds of people you wanted to meet? Has your group of friends developed some habits that disempower you such that you might want to limit your exposure to them? Are you dating someone, either on campus or somewhere else? Do you want to be? Maybe now is the time either to approach that person you've been thinking about or at least to be open to the idea of dating someone more seriously.

Consider whether you want to set any new goals or ground rules for your social interactions on campus this year. Has your social life been swallowing up your academic life, such that you need to rein it in this year and get serious about your studies? Or have you been so serious about your studies that you are spending too much time in the library and missing the broader experience of college? Remember that success in college is about balance. Is your life in balance?