With about a week until I move away from my family, it seems that most of my anxiety has been focused on one thing: school. I have spent my whole life trying to get into college and preparing myself for the work that I will be doing in two weeks time, but now that it’s here I don’t feel ready.

Whenever I tell people about my apprehension toward the future, they always give me the same answer, “You took AP classes, you’ll be fine.” But honestly, I feel like Advanced Placement was a joke. It didn’t teach me study skills or independence, it taught me how to pass a test — and not a versatile one. Advanced Placement didn’t teach me how to manage my time or write a quality paper; Advanced Placement taught me how to mindlessly follow a rubric and how to adapt to one particular style of exam.

I’m afraid that I’ve prepared the wrong way. That I’ll walk into the room the first day and just know I don’t belong there. I stressed myself out with four years full of multiple honors and Advanced Placement classes so that I could confidently stroll into college, ready for whatever it wanted to throw at me. Now, I just feel like I wasted my time. A university, in my mind, is an institution for the academically brilliant. I guess I’m just terrified that I won’t be one of those people.

And let’s talk about the graduation rate. One in three people who start on the path to a bachelor's degree will actually attain that goal. When I think about all of the people who I personally know are going to college, like me, I think that I could easily be one of the two people who doesn’t graduate. And that scares me.

I’ve literally had my whole future planned since kindergarten. I knew who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to go. Now, some details have changed, but the ultimate goal has never wavered. I want to be independent and successful and happy. But that whole plan has blossomed around my performance in one key category: academics.

That’s why college is so important to me. That’s why I feel so much anxiety toward it. I have waited my whole life just to get the chance to realize my dreams, dreams that have existed almost as long as I have been alive. No one can truly understand the weight that I have put on my own shoulders to not only survive college, but to thrive in such a competitive environment.