I’m here to write what almost every senior is thinking: Applying to college sucks. Sure, there’s that small light at the end of the tunnel your parents call ‘independence’, but with it comes paperwork and financing and essays and parental lectures about paperwork and financing and essays. Last week I spent nearly an hour painstakingly plugging in every high school class I’ve ever taken, semester by semester, into an application for one, single college. 

Why? you may ask. 

I have no clue. I had already arranged for my official transcript to be sent, but apparently the university wanted to test my ability not to throw my laptop against a wall.

Meanwhile, on top of all this, all seniors have current class work as well. Of course, I slightly self sabotaged by choosing to take three AP courses, level-4 English and two electives, but still. For the last four years I’ve been told that senior year is when you relax, go to parties, and come to school with an empty backpack. Now, looking at my stack of handwritten vocabulary notecards, knowing I have an awful number of pages to read, an essay to write and much, much more, I feel betrayed. 

Sometimes I just want to scream at teachers: “I have applications due in 20 days!” 

I don’t. Rather, like in the case of this article, I fill up a water bottle with my choice of caffeine and stay up until 2 a.m. alternating between working and cat naps until I finish or fall asleep typing. But if in the end I get a good grade and eventually finish all of my college essays, then who cares if I do so unconventionally? 

I do. Other Students do. 

Who should care more? 

Teachers could. And the administration definitely should. 

In the past, New Trier has shown its interest in limiting homework through introducing no-homework days and stressing its social work program, but this effort feels superficial. No-homework days have seemingly no jurisdiction over long-term projects, and do nothing to diminish the daily homework load.

Often teachers get away with assigning large amounts of work because ‘students choose to sign up for an advanced class’ and ‘it should only take an hour’. This line of thinking disregards the other classes with other homework students take, and the time consuming and arguably more important college applications seniors have to complete.

Something – whether it be a definite limit on assigned homework, a certain amount of homework passes given to students in case of emergencies, or school days dedicated specifically for seniors to work on applications – needs to be changed. 

Because the school expects too much of students’ time and sanity. Because even if some seniors are legal adults, we’re still kids. Because being forced to get your life together when just a month ago you were binge-watching “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and crying during “Leaves From The Vine” sucks enough.