stress

Scheduling My Life by Tomasina DeLong

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I am a junior in high school, preparing to schedule classes for my senior year. In my final year at Shaker, I will have more options than ever before. Do I continue with Spanish? Is taking physics more beneficial than taking psychology? Will colleges want to see me take a history class, even though I am not strong in history? Would I be a more desirable applicant if I focus my classes around a certain subject or should I try to be more well-rounded? What do people want?

I have a free slot in my schedule and I am trying to decide what to do with it. The more people I ask, the harder it is to make my decision because everyone adds new ideas that I had not thought of. I just need to realize that this decision is not life altering. I can drop out if it is too hard, or I could stick with it. Overall it will not change the trajectory of my life unless I let it. If I decided that my taking a class or not changes what I want to do in life, that is my decision that I made for myself.

I am caught up in trying to figure out what other people want rather than trying to figure out what I want. Senior year I can choose to relax a little bit, or I can choose to ramp things up. This is my last year of high school and I should be taking classes that challenge me, yet interest me as well. I can ask around and see what other people think, but ultimately it is my decision and only I can make it. As an especially indecisive person, this is a struggle for me.

This is MY schedule, MY college, MY future, and MY life, so why am I focused on what other people think about it? I need to take charge and realize that I am going to be the one living this life so all that matters is what I think about it.

Application Anxiety by Ian Marr

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If there’s one thing that almost all high school seniors can agree on, it’s that college applications suck. They suck a lot. It’s bad enough that we’re buried in schoolwork that we can’t afford to lose track of, and application deadlines only add to that stress. If you have a procrastination problem like I do, you’ll understand that this is an absolutely unforgiving combination. Waiting until the deadline date to send your ACT scores only to discover that the website is down for maintenance is possibly one of the worst feelings a student can have. However, looking back on these experiences, I can see that the anxiety that exists with the application process is nothing compared to the relief that’s felt once it’s completed. It is a burden that we are capable of lifting early, but we choose to ignore out of fear. But once it’s done, that fear will become incredibly distant.