Wednesday, March 28, 2007

College Applications: The Procrastination Game

I have been looking forward to College for as long as I could remember. I loved the idea of being on my own, far away from my parents and their rules. It all seemed so far away and then before I knew it it was time for me to start looking at Colleges. Throughout my junior year I looked at Binghamton, Buffalo, University of Delaware, and University of Maryland: College Park.

When Junior year ended I was so relaxed because I figured no more work until September. Thats probably why I was surprised when in August alot of my friends all said that they started their applications. I have always been a procrastinator so to me, August was way to early to start. Everyone kept warning me that the applications took forever but i just kept pushing them aside. I knew I would get everything done so I was not worried.

The rest of the summer flew by and then school started. Everyone was talking about where they were applying and where they wanted to go. College was the center of every conversation but I was still unsure of where I wanted to apply. In the end of September, my best friend handed in all of her applications and finished all of her essays. I finally decided that maybe it was time to start.

I started with the "easy" stuff. I did all of the forms and filled out all of the blue sheets for the guidance apartment in my school. I hit my teachers up for recommendations and I made my resume. I finished all of my stuff within a month but one thing: the dreaded essay.

I thought my college essay was going to be the easiest thing to write. It had no specifications and I could basically write whatever I wanted, but no matter what I did, I could not write it. I tried writing it from all different "angles". After all of my attempts, all I did was sound desperate. Finally, after alot of thinking, I realized I could just write about myself.
I ended up writing about a story about myself from when I was younger. The story was funny but serious at the same time and it related to alot of things in my life. I ended up writing, in my opinion, a really interesting essay.
Looking back I definitely should have started my applications earlier. I would have saved myself alot of stress from having to cram everything in all at once. As for my essay, I regret that I spent so much time thinking about how I was going to write my essay, I ended up just overthinking everything and wasting time. I could have written that same essay in a quarter of the time that it took me too if I had just relaxed and stopped worrying about what the colleges wanted.