Pelumi--Senior Year Struggle

Congratulations! It’s finally senior year, the last year of high school, graduation is closer, you can just see yourself walking across that stage…Watch out! Noooooo, you’re too late and you have just been hit by a hurricane of college apps. I mean, in reality you could not have escaped. You knew it was coming but you thought it would just be a breeze. You thought you would sit back, have one less period, college apps would only take a day, and brag sheets? What are those?!?! Then, you would have second semester to turn up!!!! There’s prom, grad night, senior sunset, and most importantly, GRADUATION!!! But no, instead you find yourself stressing out, you find out that the brag sheet takes forever, so maybe bragging isn’t for you. And those flipping personal statements and essays you don’t even know what to write about. And the homework just keeps coming because some teachers just don’t care! You get 4 hours of sleep and you still have extracurricular activities. Your room is a mess, and you can’t find your bed anymore. Your floor is covered with the propaganda ads you get in the mail from colleges. And you have to keep your grades up, because this is your last chance to give your GPA a boost. You spend time looking at different websites to see what colleges look for, especially your dream school, and every website is saying 100 different things. You are wondering if everything you have done for the last three years is just going to go out the window. At the end of the day, you’re just trying to get into college. And college is not doing anything to make your life easier. The college industry does what they have to. Yes, the college industry, I will explain why they are an industry. These colleges have multiple sources of revenue. What’s revenue? Aren’t you in Econ? Just kidding, I knew you weren’t paying attention. Revenue is the income that a business has from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers.You see, we are the consumers, we give them money by paying to send SAT scores that we wish were a lot higher. We pay for application to a schools that might not accept us, and to top it all off there are no refunds! Not to mention the amount in tuition you will be paying the college you DO get accepted into for the next four years. To be safe, you result to applying for scholarships. But then you realize that applying for scholarships is also not a one day thing. Some scholarships require essays and letter of recommendation, it is like applying to college all over again especially since you might not receive the scholarship. Now you just do what you have to do, because you are worried about all the money you have to spend second semester because you hear that senior year is expensive, and slowly it is becoming your reality. Before all things mentioned, you thought you were struggling alone. Well, now you see you are not, even if you cannot relate to every scenario, you can relate to most. And it is not just us, high school seniors all over the country, and some internationally are going through similar things. Most people are putting the finishing touches on their applications. Those who applied early decision are having anxiety, and wether you applied early decision or are going to apply regular decision, you cannot help but thing what goes on in the decision room. You can only pray that your file ends up in the “admit” pile. So thank God for schools with rolling admissions. And at the end of the day, there is only so much you can do. The seniors before you went through this, and they turned out just fine right? At this point, you can only do what you can do. Just remember, yes, you will graduate, and yes you will get into college. So try to enjoy senior year… well maybe second semester, and don’t think about those AP tests just yet. Like the cast of High School Musical sang, “We’re all in this together!” But, we know Disney lied to us, and high school is nothing like High School Musical.