Nearly a year ago, I found myself stressing over the wording of the 50 word and 500 word responses to college apps all the while procrastinating everything else and the stress-causing babbling. A little more than a year ago, I finished my last post on this uneventful site, concluding Governor’s School and opening my senior year.
And so, the last year of realizations, failed attempts at the manifestation of dreams long ingrained in my definition of success, have gifted some regret, contempt, apathy, (perhaps) wisdom and appreciation. This is then duly titled “Updates, long overdue” as, with strong intention, I had planned on keeping active, and just as I have library books 5 years overdue hiding underneath my bed, I acknowledge that, for myself and others, it may do good to write and rewrite and eventually share the thoughts and happenings of the year past into the ever-closing future.
Applying
Around this time last year, as I repeat, I had it ALL figured out. Hours of research on the all-knowledgeable College Confidential, several phones calls to peers whose acceptances sparked interest and a whole lot of jealousy, and nightly sessions of Instagram stalking universities and their admits led me to believe Stanford would be the perfect fit. More than perfect, really. Being one of six, and the oldest, to a single mother, would leave me with near no debt, I’d spend the next four years living gloriously in Cali’s sunshine and on Stanford’s amenities, including those two large pools and fitness center. I’d become a football game attendee, already having considered college football on the West Coast acceptable whereas high school football in my small Appalachian town was not. I researched potential classes and read ratings of professors. To say the least, I became attached, regardless of how the odds were not in my favor.
I also applied to UNC under an Early Action plan. This would be my safety school, and the only public school to which I applied. My mother saw this as a bold move, but was not involved in the application process. After submitting both applications, and scholarship applications to each, I stagnated. Messed around in physics. Held onto this ideal of college life while making a lofty list of colleges I’d apply to RD, ranking each one based on attractiveness of low acceptance rates, median earnings after graduation, prestigious legacies, etc. It probably was not healthy, this elitism. That observation, however, comes in hindsight as I found myself being enamored, to varying degrees, with being a student at each of the schools.
Deciding
I’m indecisive. I’m sure my friends can attest irritably to this unsavory trait. Fortunately (if looking for silver lining), or unfortunately, there was not much of a choice to make.
I opened one acceptance message through academic institution portal after another, starting with Stanford’s oh-so-awaited response in early December. Deferment. Lucky me. Not outright rejection, but more waiting. So I did. UNC’s came (acceptance! woo!), as did my Morehead semifinalist notification (first round, not second). Great. I had written what I estimate to be 12-17 essays/pesky short responses between January 1st and January 2nd to meet the RD dates. This writing seemed chore-like, un-fun, incredibly difficult in the search for the right wording, phrasing, that would establish empathy and my character without heralding myself a victim in a sob story. Without an attempt at sympathy, I suppose. Still, I wrote enough to apply to 10 additional institutions, some because my mother had passively requested I did.
Between March 13 – March 30, I’d hear back. And it went like this:
Middlebury: waitlist
Bowdoin: rejection
Vanderbilt: rejection
University of Chicago: waitlist
Duke: rejection
Columbia: waitlist
Harvard: waitlist
Brown: rejection
Yale: rejection
Dartmouth: waitlist
And the answer to my deferment, the question I had searched in the small search tool on College Confidential since being notified I had been waitlisted at Harvard ??!: “getting into Stanford and being waitlisted at Harvard?”
A few posts had mentioned it, oh yes they had. Yes, yes! Here were some experiences coming from idiots, as I scoffed at the discussion, that were really questioning whether they should commit themselves wholly to Stanford when they were, unfortunately, waitlisted at Harvard and would rather go there. MY VALIDATION! FINALLY! And so I opened that fateful portal for the sixteenth time since Ivy Day (sixteenth time that day, that is) to receive a rejection. I didn’t cry. I simply, ugh, suppose I tried to ration with being accepted only to my state flagship school, the safety I had intended to keep as only a safety. A blow to ego.
A few days later, in the minutes eve of an AP exam, I received a call from an unknown number, although my light-up rectangle informed me that the call was being fielded from Middlebury, Vermont. Lovely. I refused the call, not wanting to disrupt the pre-exam stress with outside stress, though it was, regardless, on my mind – a pondering as to what the subject of such a phone call might be. Probably a telemarketer, I presumed. Or an acceptance from the waitlist. I tried to imagine and live with the former as I began to read the multitudes of multiple choice questions, and carefully coloring in the lines of the beloved College Board coloring book.
Joyously, and somewhat not joyously, as my indecision would prove to return and create turmoil in relationships and thoughts as a byproduct of too much damn thinking, I accepted the news that I had received admission to Middlebury College after all. I was no longer bound to a future in which the decision had been made for me. And I had yet to receive final word from both Harvard and Columbia.
I committed to Middlebury, yet attended orientation for Carolina before ultimately cancelling my registration in the few remaining days before classes started. Eventually, I’d be let off the waitlists at Columbia and Harvard, each email being accompanied by a tone of “sorry sweetie, if only under different circumstances…”
In my hesitancy to fully commit to either of my standing choices, and in regards to situations of familial distress out of my control, though I like to believe they are, I had deferred my enrollment to Middlebury til February, joining a class of 85 others known to Middlebury and its students and the job market and my Instagram bio as the class of “Middlebury ‘23.5.”
Huzzah, I hear the angels and my mother cry. She hath made a decision at last.
Canada
My friends and family are grateful indeed that, although it has been time-consuming and wholly encompassing of my thoughts during pieces of the past year, college has, surprisingly, not become my personality, nor my only pride in living. The adventures and opportunities produced thus far, without an association to college, have enriched my life far more than my late decision.
Summer 2018: upon reintegrating myself into a peer society less enthused by discussing points of politics, metaphysical and philosophical phenomena, I looked to travel and the future for answers to a boredom with the status quo that I had rarely done much about during previous summers. Not to say that I did not appreciate my friends, but a dissonance was growing between the way I believed I ought to act and the way in which I behave around a select few. As such which follows catalyst events and a good half of one’s close friends leaving for college, my group of reliability shrank to a select three or four. Throughout it all, when journaling and crying and assorted other means of cathartic behaviors held to be not quite enough, I daydreamed of this ideal summer trip as one of solace, self discovery, joyous appropriate use of legality, and French speaking. And so, I began to save.
Savings jars seem passive. Stuff a few cents here, and some loose ones in as well, and never get anywhere in the direction of the savings goal one may have in mind. I found, through paying attention to percentages and being generally frugal, that it was far less difficult to save than I imagined. Of course, I am fortunate enough to be in a place that does not require my little earnings to be placed into a larger pot for bills, food, etc. That will come. So instead, taking this freedom from financial responsibility as I could, I places half, or close to half, of all odd-job cash I received from January to June in a small jar. I’d count it regularly to ensure that nosy siblings had not helped themselves, but otherwise it remained out of sight, and relatively out of mind, until the trip planning required a total, then a deposit, to manifest from ideal to reality.
Soon after release from high school for forever, the day of departure came. Caroline, who has remained a steadfast friend since April 2018 and on, accompanying me as a co-conspirator in the planning and execution of this demonstration of freedom, teenage and American without the abuse of guns or others or substances or rock ‘n roll.
Leaving early one July morning, our senses remained still unaware of the actuality of doing it. Finally, we could relish in realizing a talked about tale of this immense and uncertain future that our friends and family seemed to doubt would truly happen. Instead, a part of me, and perhaps some of her, seemed to refuse to acknowledge what was happening in its completeness. We did not disregard it, actively, yet an inactive part of my conscious sought to preserve what was happening as a future, rather than be disappointed.
Aside from the first night of sleep, little did come as disappointment. This we discussed in awe during the long driven trek from Maine to Virginia. Still awake at 4 am out of necessity, the babble of words, possibly incoherent at face value, expressed gratitude and awe at both what had been accomplished and the thunderstorm that was, at present, underway and sending incredible bolts of lightening to contrast, in totality, with the darkness of sky and road before us.
The less interesting highways of the mid-Atlantic states, then New York, Vermont, Quebec, Maine, and a mind-numbing trip down. Ten-ish days to make a fateful discovery in wants and needs post-high school. Or, ten-ish days to use and explore alternatives outside of North Carolina, the South, et cetera.
2750 miles after embarkation, Caroline and I arrived at the bottom of her torn driveway again, triumphant in a validation obtained in completion and safe arrival to reality once more. Our points of interest, focused most on New England locations, had provided hours of conversation – discussing Middlebury and its pros/cons, attempting to fully capture the natural magnificence a hike and the pine scent in le parc national de la Jacques Cartier, or mouths and minds salivating for food and thought in regards to the local source promise of L’Origyne in Quebec City.
It is rather difficult to encompass all touching aspects of such a voyage, and particularly more difficult if I have neglected journaling the experience. Thus, below, I have included some photos and petite descriptions of their worth.
:/ 