One of the most stressful questions I’ve been asked is, "What do you want to do next year?"
People have been asking me about my post-high school plans for a few years, but now it’s my senior year. This is the time when I’m supposed to start having answers to these questions, and it’s a lot of pressure.
When I first started getting questions about colleges and majors and future careers, I panicked. I had no idea what I wanted to do, apart from the fact that I knew I wanted to go to college. I couldn’t even answer any of the basic questions to consider when choosing a college: Public or private? Big or small? Near home or far away?
Since then, I’ve developed a better understanding of what I want to do and where I’d like to be, but it’s been a long process. One of the most useful things for me has been visiting colleges.
I didn’t like the first few schools I visited, so that gave me an idea of what I wasn’t looking for. Armed with this information, I could start identifying colleges that would be a better match for me.
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Although I’m extremely excited that I’ll be starting college next year, I wish I had more time for the college-search process. After being gone all summer, I realized that I hardly had any time left for college visits or more soul-searching before I had to decide where I was going to apply.
I did get in a trip over MEA, but there’s a limit to what I could do in four days.
Even though I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked, I think I’ve finally come up with a good list of colleges where I would like to go — now I’m working on the next, equally stressful step of actually applying.
I’ve realized as I’ve gone through this difficult and exciting process that everyone wants something different. I have friends whose dream colleges are the same ones that I hated, and there are people (such as my dad) who can’t fathom what attracts me to the colleges I like.
My job is to make choices that will make me happy, not to do what someone else says I should. After all, I’m the one who will be living my life.
