Waiting for college decisions, I’ve found, is possibly even more stressful than sending in the applications themselves.
Whether or not you are applying early decision, early action, or rolling admission—the feelings on the matter don’t differ too much. Honestly, until you receive your first affirmative admission, stress doesn’t tend to really go away. Even now, with two acceptances to schools I would enjoy going to, I still find myself on the edge of my seat. I’m sure most other seniors can relate to the existential dread of the future and whatever it is meant to bring you, especially considering that all of us are at end of the beginning of everything. After this year, there is no ‘typical’ direction that we are meant to go in. We are slowly welcomed into the impending future of adulthood, where there is no going back once we’ve crossed the line for good.
I like to think college application season is the real-life nightmare of these fears personified for each new batch of high school seniors. Hence, why every single one of us is slowly losing our minds as the year goes on.
So, how do we deal with it? How do we manage our stress on top of schoolwork and other personal responsibilities? How do we stay motivated before our admissions decisions, and most importantly, after them? How are we supposed to combat senioritis? All these questions have stood the test of time, and for good reason. The truth is there is no true answer to these questions; all I know is that we have to get through it together.
I think the important thing to do during this time is to stay busy. In stressful times, if I am not constantly moving or working on something, I get lazy and I procrastinate horribly. To help me with that, I’ve gotten a lot more involved with the school in my last year. It has helped me expand my circle of friends, acquaintances, and the feeling of acceptance with my fellow peers. It’s a nice feeling, and it helps a lot with the uncertainty of the next year dawning
It’s true when they say that the senior class tends to get closer together in your last year of high school. Most of us will most likely never see each other again, and growing up in a small town means you’ve been with these kids for most of your life. We are all closing separate books ending on the same chapter—and while we might not be large characters in most of each other’s stories, we share commonality of experiences and influential environments in our adolescences.
To make it to May, to wait out the colleges who carry our futures in their hands, seniors should find common ground amongst fellow peers. Settle into our skins, discover new things about someone we’ve shared a math class with since the seventh grade, and push boundaries we didn’t know existed in the first place. The most important thing to remember is that right now, we have time. While it might not seem like a whole lot of time, there is so much to do to fill the next few months of our lives to make those memories seem like a lifetime.
