By Barbara Morrison
Editor-in-Chief

As a senior in high school every student has to accept that they will not talk about anything but their college plans for the next year. At every family gathering, holiday party, lunch table discussion, acquaintance conversation, and teacher-student interaction, they will be grilled on the status of their application, on their top choices, on what campus tours and information sessions they went to, or what colleges they are prepared to call “safeties,” despite the arrogant and potentially ironic implications in such a label.

The thing about the inevitable Question, is that everyone asks you. Your college plans are considered completely public information, fair game for everyone from your great-uncle twice removed, to customers at your after school job.

Yet, with 2363 4-year colleges in America, according to a government census, each college has to develop a very specific niche in order to compete. Every college comes with a connotation of, a party school, a jock school, an artsy school, or a preppy school, for a few examples. Due to this, college is actually a very personal and revealing choice.

And yet, every single person a senior sees will feel entitled to this intimate information; they even believe themselves to have the dubious privilege of commenting on your choices. It’s one thing when they express approval or are impressed by your college choices, but I have had many a distant relative or even random stranger try to dissuade me from my college choices.

For me, most of the colleges on my list are very specific and individual. I’ve had people tell me that I should not to go to a women’s college, as though I have not carefully considered this aspect of Smith before making it one of my top choices. I’ve had others tell me that Hampshire College is full of “odd” people, clearly showing that they have no idea who I am and therefore should not be commenting on my plans for the future.

The Question is often followed by one that is even more individual- What Are You Planning on Studying? A customer at the retail store I work at- mind you, someone I had just met- scoffed at my plans for a major in Women and Gender Studies, asking what I could possibly do with that major. A relative told me that if I majored in this area, people would label me a feminist, naïve to the fact that I have embraced feminism as an intrinsic part of my life for at least the past four or five years.

I have friends who were constantly scolded by near strangers for their choice to go to a “party school,” UMASS Amherst; what these strangers could not know, of course, was their carefully pondered reasons for choosing this school.

And this gets to the heart of my issues with the Question- most people who ask the Question do not have a personal knowledge of the senior being grilled. Additionally, any advice is arbitrary and all but useless. Every senior has already spent hours, days, even weeks of time dutifully contemplating his or her options for the future.

The Question will still, inevitably, be asked due to human curiosity, but I ask the adults and casual acquaintances of the world to consider a different option for small talk, or at least understand that they really have no entitlement to know a senior’s personal college plans, never mind critique them.