After a long few months of touring the college scene, shmoozing with admissions counselors and sitting through webinars, I am finally finished. After my last interview this week, it’s off to the races. The only steps left are to edit my essays and send them in.
Ever since our first day of high school, my peers and I have been surrounded by the rhetoric of postsecondary preparation, from pushy guidance counselors to the stressed seniors we saw endure the process in earlier years. We felt as if we had been through it three times ourselves (from freshman to junior year) before it was our turn to begin the process. Yet coming out of the first (and hardest) few steps of the process, including but not limited to: making the list of schools to apply to, contemplating and deciding what major to apply under, finessing our academic resumes and writing our essays, I can say with confidence that the process is not as scary as it appears to be.
So far in my years, I have found various different major processes to evoke similar thoughts. It is as if the period of anticipation that precedes is harder to deal with than the development that lies ahead itself.
Unlike friends, who are sending in applications to schools whose literature looks aesthetically pleasing, or whose prestige (and therefore, price) is the highest, I have prioritized the schools I believe to uphold at least one of the tenets I highly value in an educational institution. In short, I will only attend a school I apply to, and if I like all the schools that will be receiving my application, there will be nothing to be worried about.
I don’t know where I will be in a year from now, a thought that seems to scare everyone else in my life more than it scares me. But do any of us actually know where we will be in a year? Even if I do continue my journey in another state or town, I will still be on the same path I committed to years ago, which is the only constant I need to continue faithfully.
Many of my friends (who have either already gone through the process or are experiencing it with me) do not to understand this. They appear to believe that their happiness relates to, or is even contingent upon their circumstances. They act as if their purpose will be determined by the mascot of the college they commit to in May, not as if it had already been bestowed upon them by their Creator 18 years ago.
For lack of a better term, I have deemed this phenomenon pre-collegiate existentialism: the tendency to question one’s passions, purpose, or value due to the uncertainty of the college application process.
In 2023, the American Psychological Association followed a 26-year-old “named” Hannah, who, after graduating college, experiencing misfortune and the COVID scare, found herself back in the classroom for a new degree. I believe Hannah speaks for my peers when she says that “not knowing what your future is going to look like in a world where nobody knows what the collective future is going to look like is, to say the least, overwhelming.”
I, however, find these impasses invigorating. They are not times of struggle or despair, but times where I am able to consider where I take my philosophy next.
Today, increasing shares of students don’t have hobbies, passions, or desires realistic enough to make it into a field of interest in college or beyond, and without the skills to deal with the idea of simply not knowing. Today’s liberal culture has convinced us that we are the gods of our own lives, and denounced the idea of outside forces telling us what we can or should do. From birth, we are trained to see any upset (such as a college rejection letter) in our predetermined path as a grave injustice to our personal autonomy and life plans that we, solely based on our own desires, ought to have complete dominion over.
The process of college applications, as can other developments in one's life, open our eyes to the fact that we are not in control. From there, we become thrown in between the choice of holy submission before the true God and the idol we have made out of our own self image, confused as to where to land. We are faced with yet another decision that concerns our entire life as the facade of self-empowerment crumbles underneath us.
Understandably so, this is a terrifying experience, as it poses an eternal question. But, suddenly, the choice of where to spend the next four years does not seem to be as threatening of an issue. If we choose to land on the right side, we may enter heaven with calloused hands yet we will enter heaven bearing gracious hearts.
There is no need to worry about the future if God truly has it in His hands. I don’t know where I will be in a year from now, a thought that seems to scare everyone else in my life more than it scares me. None of us actually know where we will be in a year. When I continue my journey in a different place than I am today, I will continue it with the same purpose and the same faith, which are the only constants I need. I pray my peers, as well as anyone else stuck in this in-between or burdened with this existentialism, realize this soon enough and focus on their highest purpose, which illuminates every other role we are called to fill.
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