I've always liked to think of myself as a rather anti-establishment
individual.
I scoffed at the SATs as a meaningless tool of wicked bureaucracy.
I viewed good grades as worthless without real knowledge to back them up.
I told myself that it doesn't matter where I go to college, as long as I'm
able to get a decent education.
However, my "rejection of the system" was really a delicate construct of my
imagination, I recently realized.
As determined as I was to avoid falling into the maddening hype of the
college admissions process, I became the poster-child of teenage
pre-post-secondary stress by the end of the first month of my senior year.
I spent every second of my free time doing homework, researching colleges,
filling out applications and worrying about my SAT subject tests.
When people asked me what I had been doing, I had nothing to report but my
anxiety. I suffered headaches and a wicked coffee addiction. Basically, I was in
exactly the state I had set myself against.
I have always been something of a nerd (a label I wear quite proudly), but I
was a nerd with a life. Yet there I was, 18 years old with a senior driver's
license and no reason to stay out past 11 p.m.
My life had been put on hold for the kind of stuff that I knew didn't really
matter enough to let it consume me. I was feverishly racing against deadlines
and living to meet qualifications.
When I realized that I hadn't actually done anything interesting for about
two whole months, I decided that enough was enough.
I could get things done without the kind of panic tinged with defeatism that
was making me so miserable. For the sake of my sanity and my dignity, I simply
had to.
I finally started to enjoy my senior year, even when that meant hanging out
with friends while more college applications lay blank on my desk.
SATs and College Board ARE a wicked bureaucratic invention. They get you on the tests, then they catch you on the CSS Profile. It's a monopoly on the market.