We all want something in our lives. We are consumed by the desire to be successful, to be praised, to be loved. We have these goals in our lives that seem to dictate our every action. What do I want my future to be? What do I need to do to get there? How will my decisions impact my likelihood to achieve success? We set these expectations for ourselves that we just must fulfill. And for high schoolers, these exceptions center almost exclusively on getting into college.
Over the past few weeks, seniors at Marblehead High School have been hearing back from the series of colleges to which they have applied. Some rejoice, others hide their disappointment, and all the while social media becomes dominated by congratulatory messages for those who have committed to a particular university.
As a junior, I watch this process with trepidation. Not too long from now, it will be me applying to college, waiting the long months for a result, and reading either a “Congratulations!” or “We cannot offer you a place this year” at the top of every email. It will be me writing dozens of essays about my life up until then: what I’ve accomplished, what I plan to accomplish, and how I hope to eventually change the world. And I’m scared. Because every year of high school brings with it more discussions of college, more mentions of GPA, more innocent questions of “where do you want to go next year?” What began as a distant concept has come to loom over every day of my life.
I want to get into a good college. But I think that it is a mistake for college to be so central to our lives from the minute we enter high school. I was told in 9th grade that I needed to immediately start acting in ways that would impress college admissions officers in just four years. I needed to get good grades, develop strong extracurriculars, and become a leader in my community. Each one of those achievements is valuable, and I believe that the work I have done toward them has vastly improved my life and my capacity to challenge myself. But colleges are not looking for me to push myself toward those goals just because I want a piece of paper with their logo stamped on the top that says I graduated from their university. They want me to accomplish impressive things because I personally am passionate about them, because I would do them anyway, because I feel this uncontainable drive to impact an aspect of the world around me, and because I believe that I have the ability within myself to do so. College is not the end goal; it is just part of the path: a place that will foster our goals and dreams and push us to accomplish them after we graduate. Our goals and dreams. Not those that look good to colleges, not those we did because we heard that someone else did them and got into their top school, but those that we could talk for hours about, those that we would voluntarily stay up hours trying to achieve, those that we want in our lives before, during, and after college.
Colleges want you not because you want them, but because you are a real person who has something to give to the world. So don’t apply for that program you wouldn’t actually like to attend. Don’t go to that class that bores you. Don’t spend every weekend developing a project in a field that you find pointless because you think that what actually interests you won’t interest the college you want to apply to. Push yourself to do hard things, but only if you feel genuine satisfaction for doing so. In the end, if you personally find every impressive thing that you have done important, interesting, and exciting, chances are, they will too.