When I come home from cross-country practice at 6 p.m. every night, I come home to piles of work: chapters of statistics notes to do, an hour of AP Lit reading to annotate, and lesson plans to make for the newspaper. By the time I hit submit on all these assignments, it’s nearly bedtime, leaving little to no time for the looming threat that’s been hanging over my head for months: college applications.
I’m not alone in this struggle; every senior I know has to juggle extracurricular activities, homework, and jobs while simultaneously making one of their biggest life decisions. As if the Common App personal statement wasn’t enough, many top universities require supplemental essays as part of their application. These supplementals range from a simple “What are your hobbies?” question to the dreaded “Why us?” essay. It’s also expected from many schools that students have 1-2 letters of recommendation, which means students have to fill out a whole other application for their teachers requesting a letter.
Senior Elyssa Heredia balances her four AP classes with her involvement in orchestra and PALS. She also works every day and babysits up to four times a week.
“This is crunch month, [it’s] so stressful,” Heredia said. “It’s really intimidating to be 17 years old, trying to fight for your life while writing your essays, making annotated bibliographies, doing your research projects, or whatever. It’s just intimidating.”
The amount of work itself isn’t the only stressor. Most colleges require students to select a major on their application, though many seniors are unsure of what they want yet.
“We’re 17,” Heredia said. “We learned to drive a year ago. We don’t know who we are at all yet. We don’t know what we want out of life.”
“Since the brain’s only finished developing around 25-27, I feel like it’s early to make a decision like that,” senior Kai Cielo said. “And I know, everyone says you can change majors. You can. It’s not set in stone, but it feels like it a lot. So it’s not easy to be able to go into something and not be sure of it and also know there’s a possibility of it not working out for you.”
But the Common App isn’t going anywhere. Seniors will continue to fight through the stress to meet their deadlines. Balancing it all isn’t easy, but they’ll make it work, utilizing resources like the College and Career Center and Senior Seminar.
“I feel like when you get so overwhelmed, you just shut down. It’s most important to just do it,” senior Haya Dababneh said when asked about college application advice. “As much as it sucks, kind of get into the routine of just doing it, get used to it.”
As scary as the future may look, there’s no way around applications. Heredia offers her advice to next year’s seniors.
“Have a plan,” Heredia said. “I mean I had a plan, but expect your plan to go a little wrong. You need to have backups. Set deadlines for yourself. The more you put it off, the scarier it’s gonna get.”
As I head into the next two weeks, I’m remembering all the hard work I’ve put into the last three and a half years of high school as motivation. The sleepless nights studying for finals, bargaining with teachers to round-up grades, and the stress of organizing events for various clubs were all for something; this is the chance to show it off. Seniors, just give yourself that final push to the finish line. It’ll all be worth it in the end.
