For the last three years, I’ve had to listen to the seniors whine about their college applications. I would pat them on the back and pretend to understand what they were talking about, but really I had no clue. Nor did I care. Why would it matter to me that you need to get your essay about your uncle’s oyster farm under 500 words? I had bigger things to worry about, like cavorting around Winnetka and being young and carefree.
I was first introduced to this process when I was a freshman and my brother was applying to college. Then, during my sophomore year, I heard people saying things like “I need to bring up my grades this quarter to get into Dartmouth” and “I don’t think U of C will accept an A- on my transcript.” I assumed they were kidding. They were not.
Now, that it’s the beginning of my senior year, I am trying to create a stress-free environment for myself. This mainly entails (A) not working on my college essays, (B) refusing to look at the applications, and (C) not talking to my fellow Trevians about college. (A) and (B) are going absolutely wonderfully, but it seems that with (C), I have hit a snag.
You see, New Trier seniors love to talk about colleges. For instance, while I am idly wandering around New Trier, ignoring the college process and generally pretending college does not exist, people will ask me to read over their college essays. The only thing worse than writing a college essay is reading over someone else’s. Every essay I have read is just an explosion of metaphors and allusions and double-meanings with words like “gossamer” and “susurrus.” Or a beautiful well-written narrative about the time they saved fifty newborns from a shark attack or trained a coyote to be their pet. They make me feel bad about my own essay which is pretty much, “I went to high school, hehe.”

Even in the privacy of my own home, college surrounds me. Every time I log onto Facebook, I’m greeted by some status about how ahead of schedule people are with their college process. Reading statuses like “I just finished all of my college essays! #yolo!” does not help me with my quest to not think about colleges.
Worse, people are also making their statuses about how they’re now into college. And I’m happy for them. I’m so, so happy for them and I would go to their house to bake them a cake in the shape of the school’s mascot if it were socially acceptable, but there is no need to post that as their status.
Think about it: if you get denied from your dream school and you’re sitting curled up in a corner eating ice cream, the last thing you want to see are twenty-five posts from people who got into it.
The college process would be so much easier if we didn’t bring it up in every. Single. Conversation. It is awesome that you are going to college next year. But every time you tell me about how you’re almost done with your application or that you’re not sure if Johns Hopkins should be your safety school or your target, I die a little inside.
I do not want to hear about how you haven’t started the college process, or how you’re in the middle of it or how you already applied in seventh grade while I am trying to create a beautiful, college-free bubble for myself.