Higher Education, Higher Stress

Published: Oct 31, 2007

A few weeks ago, my high school held its annual college night. Aside from the collection of free ballpoint pens I acquired from perky university reps, the only thing I took home from the event was anxiety.

After seeing the gym and cafeteria crammed with dozens of booths representing military academies, liberal arts colleges, and everything in-between, the seriousness of selecting a college really sank in.

There is more information on every individual school than I could ever hope to sort through.

From the Princeton Review to Seventeen Magazine, magnitudes of sources publish information that promise to make selecting a college simple. Schools are graded on everything including soberness and time students actually study.

But all these facts make the decision even harder and more complex.

Quite frankly, all this "college talk" just freaks me out.

As much as I am looking forward to graduating from high school and furthering my education elsewhere, the road to that point is paved with stress.

The endless amounts of possibilities are overwhelming. Sure, there are various ways of narrowing them down, but I have yet to find a successful method.

A lot of people suggest using social life as a means to cut down my options. "Do I want a school that has a huge football team and the pride that accompanies it?" seems to be a standard question.

I've always said I didn't need the games and spirit, so colleges that do not encompass those qualities have been on the top of my list.

But, as schools such as USF have taught us, school pride is subject to change in a matter of plays. A lot of universities have teams but aren't pegged as football colleges until they start winning.

Up until this year, USF went unnoticed as a place for enthusiastic alumni and extreme sports life.

Now my mom, a graduate from the school, is searching endlessly to find flags, shirts, and anything else eccentrically painted in green and gold.

Other people insist that finding a campus that has strong programs in multiple fields a student is interested in is the key in selecting the right school.

But this technique of selection is not useful for people like me who can't even narrow down that decision.

Where am I going to find a college that could prepare me for a career as a journalist, painter, historian, philosopher, political cartoonist, professional opinion-haver, religious founder and circus freak?

Then you have the students who know where they want to go purely because they wish to carry on a family legacy at a specific university. Sounds like the perfect idea except for the minor problem that no two of my relatives attended the same college.

And there are the people who tell you to go with your gut instinct.

I don't know if I trust my gut to make such a life-altering decision. The most responsibility I give it is picking what to wear in the morning, or deciding what movie to watch on a Saturday night.

I think what worries me most is the fact that every school is going to have some features I don't like, and my ultimate decision is going to come down to finding the lesser of two evils. This doesn't seem like a great way to select a place I'll spend the next four years of my life.

My heart goes out to the seniors who are currently rushing to make their preliminary decisions of where to apply.

The good news for me is I still have a whole year before I have to start submitting applications. Twelve months seems to be a decent amount of time to sort through the good, the bad, and the ones with unbearably crowded dorms.

Meg Wagner is a junior at Chamberlain High School.