by Catherine Pears

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Four weeks and thirty-three minutes and my high school career is over. (Not quite, I still have to attend my two AP classes each day-but for now, I am choosing to ignore that.)

Such is the countdown currently ticking in the head of any senior participating in a Senior Project or Internship.

However, for most seniors another countdown is taking up most of the space in their brains that should be filled with ridiculously early prom plans. Acceptance and, sadly, rejection letters will be arriving shortly and there is no way to avoid the emotional traumas that are bound to happen. If you are like me, and refuse to succumb to the usual anxiety and fear that accompany the college application process, then you will understand that even the most relaxed of us are going to have shaking hands tearing open those envelopes.

Or should I say clicking on that mouse? Nowadays, more colleges are eliminating their “paper-notification” (although somehow I still receive an unseemly amount of brochures) and inviting students to check their “Application Status Updates” online. I think I prefer the old-fashioned envelope- it can be dragged out longer.

Having already gotten accepted into one school, I have the ability to remind myself that I am going to college. Even if you have not been accepted anywhere yet, you will. Stop hyper-ventilating. Stop checking your application status on your iPhone- although most of you are just playing Words with Friends.

Many students have chosen their top school- their dream school that will make their life complete! Being one of the few who has absolutely no idea where to go, I have a slightly biased view.

However, the college that rejects you even though you were made for each other is more like the boy or girl who gave you a piece of gum in your dreaded math or english class. You don’t love them. You hate that class and the gum was a lovely reminder that light remained at the end of that fifty minute block.

Just as senior year is a year of uncertainty, on the edge of childhood and adulthood, colleges shower us with attention and shiny papers with our names typed neatly like we’re important, only to ignore us a few months later when they have a fresh new pack of gum and we’re begging for a piece.

Let’s remember a time when they wanted us. They were begging for us to attend their $50,000 a year school. As they should be. No matter what school you choose, or chooses you, you will be happy. You will be out of high school and in college. The college doesn’t make you. You make the college.