by Taylor Steen

If I look at one more transcript request form, I might yell, scream, tear it into pieces and throw it into the trash. Sorry Ms. Hudson. I’ve had it. The long process of applying to colleges is exhausting. No one informed me about the late nights filling out applications, the pointless arguments with Mom and Dad or the constant worry of which college is the “perfect” one for me, nor did they warn me about the enormous stack of scholarship applications that I would have to weed through on Sundays when I could be watching ABC’s new TV show Revenge”on Netflix. No one told me about the emotional roller coaster I boarded that first day of senior year.

I was told that choosing a college was going to be the most fun experience I’d have while being a young adult. Well, that wasn’t misleading at all. I headed into this confident and cool, thinking this would be like cutting butter. That sure backfired. I sat down with my parents on a Sunday afternoon towards the beginning of the year and told them we needed to discuss which colleges I would be applying to, what scholarships to apply for, what I plan to do for the rest of my life, and all that jazz. It was a lot to tackle that first meeting but the advice that I was led on to believe made me think that this would be easy-peasy. Let’s just say that meeting ended with zero solutions and three red faces.

I don’t mind searching for my dream schools during my frees. That’s not an issue. It’s the tedious act of entering and re-entering my personal information that gets me going. Trust me, by 1 a.m., tired and delirious, the boxes start to blur together. Oh, and those horrible short answer and essay questions… I think I’ve wrote about five billion of those. Okay, I didn’t actually answer five billion of them and if I did, I’m sure I’d be acting like Kony. Those essays and short answer questions can be a deal breaker to most colleges and I never know if I am being too cheesy or if I’m lacking in emotion and spirit.

All I’m saying is, I think STA should implement a new required class into the senior’s schedule that helps students fill out college and scholarships applications with the support of college counselor Debi Hudson. It would not only decrease the stress level for me, it would help other students get organized.