Peanut butter and mustard. Macaroni and beans. [] and []. For every famous pair that goes together well, there's a million things that just don't mix. In this blog article, I'll be describing one of the most notorious: college applications and mental health. Although college application season has only begun (it's been a bit over a month as I write this), I, along with millions (3.7 million, to be exact) of high school seniors across the United States, have begun to feel the pressure. In this article and the next few, I'll go over some of the strategies I plan on using to try and avoid having a mental breakdown in the coming months. Feel free to adopt any of these if they're applicable to you!
1. Firstly, I recognized that "Finish All College Applications" is a huge and seemingly impossible task. I wanted to have a way of tracking my progress so that I know how much I have left to do, while also giving myself a sense of accomplishment along the way. The Common App website can help with this, but the information is a bit spread out, plus the site logs the user out every so often, which is annoying. For my purposes, I decided to plug all the information into a to-do app that I just started using, Amazing Marvin. (For more on Amazing Marvin, check out Emily Chen's blog post over here! ) A to-do app is nice, but a Google Document would honestly work just as well. The important part is having a way to see what needs to be done so that the task of Applying To Colleges becomes solid (and thus doable) rather than nebulous and terrifying.
2. Once I had this list, I quickly realized that most of what I had to do was -- well, if not easy then at least simple. It came down to picking where I wanted to apply Early Decision (ED) and filling in a few dozen multiple-choice questions on the Common App (except for one of my schools, which doesn't accept it). The main difficulty was going to be in writing the supplemental essays that each college required, as well as perfecting the Common App essay that I already had a draft of. Unfortunately, realizing what I had to do and doing it are two completely different things. Though I've done a bit of writing over the summer, there's only nine days until the start of school, and I only have (extremely rough) rough drafts of two supplementals. My plan was to try and write an essay every day until the 16th, but I've had a few hurdles along the way. I'll be discussing these (and how I will hopefully overcome them!) in coming posts.
Adieu for now!
