*It's just the beginning.
This summer is probably one of the most exciting, exhilirating, nervewracking summers of the beginning years of my life on this earth as I anticipate the final lap of my high school career called "college applications": a process during which I write essay upon essay until my brain is fried and it seems as though I have flipped myself inside out and poured myself onto the page as the blinking cursor moved along faster than my thoughts could handle. I took out every trait, quality, talent, anything just anything that I could muster up and wrote it down to present with a twinkle in my eye to the college of my dreams. I sat there for hours, thinking of what to write, how to make myself the best that I could be on a word document, virtually nonexistent with the push of a button. Each word is precious, each phrase is the difference between my life and death, and paragraphs absolutely kill. But through it all I'm learning who I am and who I want to become. Yes we're 16/17/18 years old and we don't know who we are yet, so how are we expected to pour out the contents of our life and of our person onto a computer screen that illuminates our dark rooms at 2 or 3 in the morning? I don't know. The questions are hard and the answers are even harder. We pull our hair and we bang the table as answers come and go but nothing seems perfect. And then we got it. The perfect sentence. But then we realize, we need approximately 30 more sentences to fulfill our quota for the night.
And as we type that final period that seals our fate forever (quite dramatic, isn't it?), we trust in what we've written and what we've accomplished in the relatively short span of 4 years and hope and pray for the best.
And as we sit in our room now, combing over each word, each decision, each sentence, the syntax of it all, we tug at our hair, wondering if it was all good enough for the college of our dreams. If it was good enough for us to promise ourselves the best future that we can. And as we wait in agony for that letter, we pace, we eat, we sleep, we study, we numb, we cry, we laugh, we become an extremely stressed version of ourselves.
And it's arrived. The letter. The letter that seems to hold the contents of our future and in moments we'll know the answer that we've been waiting for, it seems, our entire life.
And we read "...I regret to inform you..." our hearts break and our eyes begin to water as the tears stream uncontrollably down our face, refusing to stop at our jawline and continuing down into the hole that we want to crawl into. We think what could've gone wrong? What did I write that they didn't like? Was I not good enough?
No. You are good enough. You are amazing, intellectual and talented all in your own way and this letter says nothing but the fact that the school wasn't your match and that there is something even better and more perfect coming your way. You are good enough. Trust me. You have so much to offer in this world: your charm, charisma, sense of humor, kind heart, caring, empathy, compassion, organization. You name it. You are gifted. The letter, whether an admission or a rejection does not define who you are. The letter was merely another way of steering you into a better, more "you" direction. It may not seem like it now and you might feel as though your soul is crushing into nothingness, but you'll be okay. But don't ever tell yourself that you're not good enough because you are so wonderful and there is absolutely NO ONE like you out there because you are unique and breathtaking.
Don't say that you weren't good enough. Say that this particular college wasn't your match.
Don't say that you were lacking. Say that you are talented in unique and different ways - ways that are important to you.
You are special and don't you forget it.
It's not the end of the world* This is just the beginning of so much more to our lives. As I said earlier, we are 16/17/18 years old. Yes college is highly important and should be a goal, but it's not your end goal. It's just a way for you to reach whatever final goal that you have, but college is definitely not the ultimatum.