By Emma Dilanni
For many high school seniors around the world, the end of May is a stressful time as they grapple with leaving home and prepare for going off to college.
High school ending is often a landmark of new beginnings for students. College is frequently the first time adolescents live on their own and make decisions for themselves without the close guidance of their parents or other guiding figures. While this can be exciting, it comes with a lot of responsibility that many aren’t primed for.
This level of responsibility can have a strong effect. In Lucy Liu’s article “The Ugly Side of Senior Year,” she expresses the anxieties that come with the title “senior.”
“Most will point out the beauty of it: being top dog on campus, having off-campus lunches, getting the best parking spots,” Liu wrote. “But senior year also has an ugly side. For many students, it’s freak-out-about-college time.”
Youth Truth Organization, a national non-profit, performed a survey between September 2015 and December 2016, interviewing over 55,000 high school students about their preparedness for college.
The survey revealed that roughly 50% of high school students across all four grades feel that “[Their] school has helped [them] develop the skills and knowledge [they] will need for college-level classes.” As far as feeling prepared, students are largely divided.
Jose Leoncio, a rising junior at American University, shared his thoughts on senior year, and why students shouldn’t feel too worried about college.
“Really enjoy your senior year because you will lose a lot of your familiarities, like your friends, your set schedule, etc.,” Leonico said. “College is nothing like what people say in high school, it’s not as intense as people make it out to be; it’s hard work, but good work.”
Similarly, Trent Ellsworth, a rising sophomore at Brigham Young University, offered his tip on how to integrate into a new environment more easily.
“Participate in a lot of things and figure out what you like to do. Have lots of fun, it’s a good time,” Ellsworth said.
In the article “Advice for Graduating Seniors: Don’t Romanticize College,” Brennan Bernard, the director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H, explains to the Washington Post the danger of believing in “the perfect college.”
“[Many students] have gone to great lengths to master tests, stretch themselves academically and exhaust themselves with extracurricular involvement with the goal of impressing admission committees. After all of this effort, there is an expectation of perfection that simply does not exist,” Bernard said.
On the other hand, Alain de Botton, a writer for the New York Times, offered advice on how to circumvent these toxic thoughts about perfection in his article “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.”
Rather than getting trapped in this mindset, Botton suggests that “Instead, students must embrace the complexities of college life and opportunity and accept the imperfections.”