If there's one game that I've played every second, every minute, and every day of the past 4 years, it's the waiting game. And it turns out, I'm not very good at it.
I know it's normal for many college-bound high school students to be stressed. I'm familiar with that. But what makes what's already stressful enough--homework, bad teachers, SAT, ACT, SAT subject tests, AP exams, PSAT, the general horribleness of the high school social environment, and the monotony of rinse, wash, and repeat--even more stressful is the added thought of college. It's just a thought freshmen year. It's just a thought sophomore year. It's a plan junior year. And then, it's an action senior year.
Anyone motivated and under the right circumstances from the beginning of their high school experience has been conditioned to believe they are going to college. Up until senior year, everything is possible. You imagine things in your head, such as walking around Dream University's campus, telling people you studied at Dream University, blah blah.
This is when the waiting game begins: when every academic move you make will affect your college chances. At first, it's not too bad. Besides the "man I wish I was in college!" thoughts periodically, it's not horrible. Fast forward to junior year, and it's a slightly different story.
You wish you were in college so much that it hurts sometimes. At least, it did for me. I spent my entire junior year only thinking about senior year and freshman year of college, specifically how freaking awesome it would be to finally be finishing this difficult journey. How I'd definitely be able to get into a college with an acceptance rate of 16%. How I'll get all my super prestigious college decisions, and how could I possibly choose from seven Ivy League decisions with full rides! How I'd be graduating, throwing my hat up in the air, and thinking what a wonderful experience this has been.
Well, guess what. Senior year sucks. I can't remember the last time I've had fun, felt truly calm, or actually even content. It's just been a year of too many stresses. Why? Because the waiting game is coming to a close, and I'm finally coming to terms with the reality of college admissions. This is the truest experience of the reality of the unfairness of the real world for me.
I applied to seven schools. Stupidly. You know why? Because 4 of them are near-Ivies and one Ivy. One of them is the school I really would have liked to get into, one I'm barely interested in, and the last is my backup school. I basically knew I was setting myself up for possible disappointment, and I still applied anyway. I wrote all of those 30 stinking essays. I poured my heart and every ounce of energy I had into them. I spent the last few months of 2013 taking the last few critical standardized tests I'd need to be considered. And all along, while exhausted and stressed to the max, I kept telling myself that everything was possible. Maybe that sounds good to you, but it's really come back to hurt me now.
I haven't been outright rejected. In a somewhat worse way, I've been "practically rejected" from two schools so far, one of which I really, really, really wanted to attend. They didn't outright say I was excellent, and they didn't outright say I wasn't bad. Just average. And that's hard to accept when you've prided yourself on being a bit above average in many things for the past few years.
I believe everybody loses when we play the waiting game. The loss is different for different people. Even if you "win"-- you get into the college you want, you finally marry the person you want--you've still lost a lot of something along the way. In my case, I've lost all of that precious time I spent on those applications, a lot of my sanity, my energy, a lot of my happiness, and some of my dreams. All for what? Where my education will take place for the next four years? This is looking like an extreme, somewhat superficial sacrifice. And it shouldn't be, because I know that I'll look back in one, two, three, or four years and think how trivial it has been. But I can't think that now, because the waiting game still continues.
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