Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Truth.

Nation, my current hardship calls for the evil of all evils and the downfall of our country: straight-up honesty.

I'm screwed when it comes to this college process, because I made the mistake of being enamored of a school that will definitely not accept me. I got deferred, but the predicted acceptance rate is less than 10% this year. TEN PERCENT of applicants, Nation.

And the frustrating thing is, I should have been able to make myself stand out, and ultimately be in that 10 percent. Unfortunately, I'm a privileged white girl who didn't feel the need to actually start applying myself to schoolwork until my junior year. And when we're talking odds like these, that's just too late.

I am seventeen years old; I don't have many regrets in life. The fact that I consciously chose not to live up to my potential and just thought that I could get by on natural intelligence and sarcasm is probably the biggest regret I have at this point. This whole college application process seems engineered to teach students that they aren't as unique or intelligent or witty as they thought they were. I'm a passionate, well-read, sometimes likable student and I can't go to the school I love, the school where I'd work my ass off to be worthy of going, the best school (in my opinion), because I wasn't as driven at age 14 as I am now.

I understand that there are other factors (recruited athletes, legacies, stuff like that), and that's just how the application process is. But at this point, I can't help but wish that every person who wants to go to a college and could feasibly handle the courseload should be able to go. Of course, that's not practical. It just would be nice if my circumstances weren't so hopeless. Then again, my circumstances are all of my own doing, so I have no reason to complain.

Thanks for dealing with this brief pause, Nation. More fighting the liberal media elite soon.