This time next year, I can write to you, the reader, from my college dorm. Maybe with my roommate looking over my shoulder.
Where is this college? Who will this roommate be?
I have the answer to neither of these questions. It's late October of my senior year of high school, and no applications bearing my name and accomplishments have been sent out. I've been largely avoiding the topic of my plans for next year...because they are non-existent.
I'm afraid. I'm afraid to leave the people I was raised with, everyone from my past who has shaped who I've become (for the better or the worse). I'm afraid of the magnitude of this decision, and even more so I'm afraid of making the wrong decision. There are hundreds of schools out there, I'm sure, at which I could be very happy. I'm confident that I can adjust to being anywhere with anyone, but there's always the little voices of college reps telling you that you *will* find a place that's perfect for you.
What if no where is perfect for me? Or what if *anywhere* is perfect for me?
I'm a big fan of small public liberal arts schools. This is very possibly owing to the fact that I've grown up just blocks from one and love it...but there's something holding me back from just effing the college search and going with my gut...to stay at UMM. (I really, really do love it here. I'm not just saying that. I feel so at home on campus, I love the size and surprising diversity, I love the direction in which this school is headed.) What is this something, I'm asking myself?
Maybe it's because I've been hearing my whole life about how much potential people seem to think I have. So my parents read to me when I was little and I played outside instead of watching TV. This seems to have given me a huge advantage over the other kids. It taught me to think. It taught me to explore. It made me into one of the Smart Kids. The ones who are supposed to go to some big name school and get their PhD in something hard to pronounce and do something good for the world. I hate that people I know seem to have these expectations for me. What if I don't live up to them?
Maybe it's because many of my close friends are branching out, dreaming of actually heading off to some big name school next year. Maybe I don't want it to seem like I'm somehow not as capable or ambitious if my best friends are making their mark on a 40,000 dollars-a-year institution and I'm at public school X. I'm so god damn competitive, I can't just let myself be happy. I need to be happy and reassured that I'm not coming in last in this stupid race that society has constructed for us.
I'm not done here, but I have to go to class. Yay.