It was senior year of high school; the excitement of Freedom was in the hallways. Everyone was excited to get accepted to many different colleges.

We finally got to choose our path and go in many directions. I went to a private school and most of the students I went to school with, had siblings that were older then us. I am adopted to a single parent family. My mom is the most amazing person I love. She grew up in a different time then now. It's expected that parents motivate their children to apply and work on college applications. My mother didn’t believe that she should do anything in the college processes. I am person who needs someone to remind me to do something and I need structure. All I truly wanted was my mom to help me in the scary overwhelming process. I Don’t Know truly what I want to major in. That really played a role with how the school guidance counselor helped me. I didn’t know where I wanted to go or what I was looking for. I didn’t want to go to a school and fall in love with the campus and people just to leave in two years to go to other school and start over.

I had to figure out THREE things that everyone was asking me or wanting to know...

1) where do you want to go?

2) what do you want to study?

3) Do you have the GPA to get in?

The most frustrating questions in my life. My answer to those questions are NO, NO, NO. I felt like a failure to everyone I talked to in my senior year. I felt like the odd one out and that I was looking through a mirror at my own pathetic self. I am not the smartest or brightest or prettiest but I am real and I'm human. Beginning senior year, I had a 3.35 somewhere around there and my SAT was low 1100. My options where limited in the Florida. I didn't do sport for two years for the school and I worked so I wasn’t active in my school. I was average on my application, boring really. I did volunteer my time and go on mission trips but it wasn’t enough. They want you to stand out and the pressure is real and everywhere. The essay was my weakest area. I had an English teacher look at my essay, she hated it and said I should start over. My confidence took an ultimate dive to nothing. I was stressed. I was overwhelmed. I was out of patience. I didn’t want to fail but it seemed I was. The pressure was only getting worse.

Christmas came and I was relieved that I didn’t have to face my peers everyday talking about how fabulous their life was and how they were SO getting in to Florida State or University of Florida or Columbia. But, Christmas parties made up for it and family was on my back asking me where was I in the process. Did I pick a Major yet? Like NO not yet trying to figure it out. I had a couple of ideas but I wasn’t ready to commit myself to one yet. I didn’t like the pressure that society puts in our lives of how we have to know in high school. We are young adults trying to figure out how to survive. I believe there are only a few who truly know what they want to do, the rest fake it. I don’t fake anything in my life, my failure to pick a major was something that most people didn’t like it and made them uncomfortable.

My guidance counselor in the spring gave me a hall pass one morning during homeroom. It was a surprise she put me into a meeting for Hillsborough Community College. I was freaked everyone but me knew what the hall pass meant. Everyone looked at me with a wretched expression on their face. I found out by my smart friend that the meeting was for community college... the idiot meeting for people who are dumb. Well, I went to get out of class and I was happy to not sit through another lecture. The meeting was for the Honors program at Hillsborough Community College. I didn’t know that they had an Honors program and it seemed like a really good and amazing thing to be part of and there was NO ESSAY involved. I was so HAPPY there was no essay. I still wasn’t sure I was going to take the L on trying to complete a college application and pay for the application. I kept this meeting in the back of my mind. I happy to say I am in the Honors program and still figuring it out but I feel like I am in the right place.

I really didn’t know what I wanted and where I could see myself at. I knew I wanted to go away but I knew it really wasn’t an option with what I had to work with. But, I had friends who were in the same position as me and that made me feeling okay about it. I was fortunate for that and I want to say Thank You! I see two of my friends regularly on campus and I feel like we ended a chapter in our lives together wondering what will happen and we somehow made it a whole summer to be at the same community college trying to still answer the same question WHO ARE WE AND WHAT DO WE WANT TO DO? I really wanted someone to feel like me and share my doubts about life. I wanted to feel like I wasn’t the outcast and loser that society said I was because I didn’t feel like. I believed that I need more time and more experience in my life to know what I want to be. But maybe I won't know and will eventually have to settle but for now I am happy. I made it and if you are struggling I want you to know it's OKAY! You will make it and don’t let someone bully you for not knowing.