March - The Deciding Factor

God, I love getting acceptance letters in the mail... I am sure everyone reading can [hopefully] attest to this in the coming month. March is widely known in my area as being the deciding factor for hopeful high school students waiting to consider themselves "college bound". Most colleges and universities send out their letters during this month, and I myself have already begun to count down until that fateful day I get the letter from my top ranked choice.

But to avoid making this about my own personal college letter experiences, I just want to share a little more about how much this affects my peers all around me. A friend confided in me that, if he got a letter of denial from a certain Ivy League school, he would most likely not go to college and instead just find a job straight in the workforce.

I was bewildered when I finished talking to him; why would you stake your future on a single letter from a single school out of the many located around the US? It seems that, for people like him, March will prove to be the most important month of the rest of his life. Whether or not he got accepted, I do not know, but I DO know that he needs a backup plan.

Another girl told me that she didn't really care about college, that she had already gotten accepted to the local university in a major she wasn't really interested in. March didn't mean anything to her at all; in fact, it seemed like the idea of embarking on the second journey of life wasn't that exciting. I should probably mention that she also didn't want to move away from dear-old mom and pop, but I still can't help wondering why more people my age aren't excited by the prospect of working, learning, and living amongst new and like-minded individuals. Universities are the factories of the world; they crank out a product of human ingenuity that literaly makes the world work smoothly. And I can't wait to be a part of that experience.

Back to March; I've applied to 11 schools, have been accepted to 4, and denied from 1. That leaves 6 more schools to hear from, most of which I consider the top choices. My anticipation can hardly be contained, but for now, I will have to settle for reading the literature sent to me from the ones already considering me, and hopefully that will put me over until I can open up those six envelopes and jump for joy.

College. Life. Joy.
Me.