“Submit” – the text that ominously lurks in a large square button on the end of every online application. A couple weeks ago, I finally removed that annoying button by pressing submit.
After finishing junior year, I had thought about the upcoming college application season; I promised myself that I wouldn’t be a slacker and that I would work on my applications during the last month of summer.
Sadly (and predictably), this never happened.
I still had a lot more work to do, and I grossly underestimated the amount of time that it would take. Procrastination and its lovely power took over me, and soon school started.
Classes, newspaper and other extra-curricular activities sucked my time up like a tornado. The first two months of senior year were passing by quickly and the next thing I knew; I had a mere two weeks left to edit my writing into somewhat intelligent-sounding essays. Obviously, I needed to get to work.
During that last week before the November 1st deadline, it seemed like the world was against me sending in my early application. I had tests, papers, layout nights, and debate meets all stuffed into one week. I barely had time to finish all of my homework and projects, let alone finish my college applications.
When that awful week finally ended, I knew what I had to do. I needed to lock myself in my room with my computer and get the job done. And that’s exactly what I did.
The next day, after polishing my essays for a couple more hours, it was finally time to press send.
Surprisingly, it was incredibly hard to do so. I was unable to move on for fear of immediately finding a mistake after sending in my application, so I abused the link that would allow me to see the final version of my entire application by pressing it a countless number of times.
After a while, I realized that I wasn’t making any more edits and that it was truly time to submit. Finally, my cursor hovered over the “Submit” button, and with a click, my application was in.
That feeling of horror that I had expected never came. (Although I did end up finding a mistake – I forgot to check one my extra-curricular activities as something I would like to continue in college.) All I felt was relief.
College applications can be a stressful and tiring, not to mention scary, process. While it’s easy to let the fear of pressing that “Submit” button, slowly accumulate, it’s wiser to just let go and trust yourself. You can only check your essays for grammatical error so many times. The easiest way to start your future is by taking that leap of faith and it starts with the college application.