It seems like the pressure really gets put on you when you hit 12th grade. Everyone expects you to be ready to apply to colleges. Everyone boasts about the colleges they are going to apply too, especially the smart kids. You know what sucks? Being not that smart or not as well "rounded" as colleges seem to want nowadays. What do we do?
We have more work when it comes to looking for colleges. We can't apply for those well known, super smart, super expensive colleges like Harvard, Yale, Brown and so on. This is for a few reasons. One, some people are just not that super smart. We don't get grades that are all A+ or get devastated when it drops to an A. We aren't the school co-president or the soccer captain or the NHS president or the president of the Honor Council. We aren't perfect in every single thing we try.
This year, AP Biology is probably going to kill me. I don't understand it even half as well as some of the bio experts in my class do. My English teacher is such a hard grader that I get scared to show him even my non-class work scared that he's just going to make fun of me or just correct the gazillion mistakes which are probably in it. Even if I love the subject of Stats, my teacher happens to be the most blunt person in the world and yet his comments and criticisms do hit me pretty deep.
I could go on but then I'd sound like whining. I'm not trying to do that... I'm just trying to make a point. It's hard for people like me, who have regularly have a hard time in school get into colleges that we would want to get into. We can't aim high and we are encouraged not to do so. Counselors will tell us to come back to earth.
Others around us whine about how someone else is applying to the same school as them such as Yale or Darthmouth and how they will have to compete with this classmate. You stand there awkwardly as you think about how they wouldn't dream to try to apply to the colleges you try to apply to sometimes only because your family can't afford to send you somewhere more expensive. You aim for colleges that will help you financially the most and give scholarships that apply to people like you, not so smart but not stupid either.
The smart kids seem to live in a different realm than you. They stand around discussing who is applying for the best IV league colleges and what they want to do. You think about it and come to the conlusion that you still have no clue what you want to do. The counselor hands you a copy of your trascript and you want to either 1) burn it 2) pretend that you never saw it or 3) go hide in a corner for the rest of your miserable life.
How would you be able to reach that impossible dream of yours that will always seem beyond your grasp? What were you think when you got all hyped when you started looking through the requirements for college? Why in the world did you think you had the chance? More over, you start thinking, why try when you know you're not going to get that far?
