Blog

By Alejandra Rojas

 Senior year is a time for learning and growing. It’s a time where everything you have done in high school will pay off when you receive your college acceptance letter. You may have heard this a million times from your teachers and counselors, but senior year is not as easy as it is cracked up to be. As a senior I have found this year to be the most difficult I have ever encountered. Between taking an early morning college class, completing a senior project, applying to college, writing essays and senioritis, I found myself lost amidst all of the chaos.

 Though filling out papers about myself shouldn’t be so difficult, I couldn’t bring myself to get started. All of my applications sat stacked on a messy bookshelf staring at me as I went to bed each night. As application deadlines approached, I set aside designated times and planned out a schedule of which application I would fill out first. Each time I said I was going to start I told myself, five more minutes of TV, and then I’ll get going. Five minutes turned into five hours, which later became five weeks in which I stalled, thinking that if I forgot about my college worries they would all go away.

 I couldn’t put my finger on why I was so reluctant to answer the simple questions on the applications and then it hit me. I was afraid of change. I was afraid to start letting go of my childhood, and of becoming a college student. I was afraid of not receiving financial aid and of not making it. Applying to college is not about filling out a piece of paper or about writing a few essays. It’s not about teacher recommendations or about high school transcripts. It’s about figuring out what the next step is, about what you want to do with your life and how you plan on pursuing it.

 In all honesty, I think that applying to college was the hardest thing I have ever done. Not because of the questions on the application, but because of all of the emotions that come with sending off applications; the fear of letting go of home, the fear of exposing yourself to numerous admissions evaluators, and the fear of rejection. After realizing what my problem was, I figured out that applying would be the least of my problems. If I didn’t apply, I wouldn’t ever get to do bigger, better (or much harder) things. 

That was how I did it. I put myself in the mindset where I told myself that in order to see the big picture, in order to become and accomplished, successful individual, I would have to go to college, and the only way I could do that was by taking and chance and applying.