Please allow me to share my first-hand account of this weird cultural fixation with teens finding the “perfect” school:

During my sophomore year of high school, it hit me: my days nestled in the comfortable clutches of secondary school were numbered. After graduation, I would effortlessly move onto the “best years of my life” at college and the rest of my existence.

As this life plan suddenly occurred to me, my personality changed. I became utterly driven by the idea of college acceptance letters swarming into my house like Harry Potter’s letters from Hogwarts in “The Sorcerer’s Stone.”

From that moment, I thought of the concept of a university daily. Idolizing the prospect of receiving incredible scores on SATs and ACTs, I enrolled in four standardized testing prep courses, of which I studied for every single day. The fact that there is a booming industry, making absolute bank off the anxious high schooler, speaks volumes. Truly, Boston College reported the value of the college testing preparation market up to $700 million.

Joining random clubs and teams to pad my resume, staying up all night to write impeccable essays, and reviewing for exams from the minute I woke to the minute I fell asleep, I was exhausting myself. I put quantifiable scores above my mental state.

The worst part: I didn’t even have a true end goal. There was no special school for which I was striving, just the idea of a “dream college” daunted over me.

Fast-forward to my senior year, I pondered which college to go to hourly. I always came up short because I would find a new fault with every single school. This one is too selfishly expensive. This one is too scarily risky. This one is too embarrassingly safe.

By March of that year, all the cards were on the table. I received answers from all the colleges to which I applied. Surprisingly, I got into my top choices, my so-called “dream colleges” - but I didn’t feel like everyone told me to feel.

A bitter wave of emptiness and overwhelming sadness crashed over me. I had spent years of my youth stressing and studying…for what? Letters from colleges that I had already overanalyzed to the point of complete ugliness? It felt like a waste.

When the time to move into college arrived, I decided to reprioritize and redefine myself. It was high-time to acquire more depth than a culmination of numbers (my scores and scholarships).

I realized that your environment can only matter so much in terms of your internal condition. Your reaction to everything around you is so much more important to your joy than, well, everything around you.

Finding the most elite and flawless university is an unfair expectation to put on a single place. So why does our society make it this way? Don’t get me wrong, it is very rewarding to work diligently on your studies. However, at what point is this whole thing even about learning anymore?