Around this time last year, my whole family was one big, overly stressed and tentatively excited mess. My siblings and I were getting ready to choose where we would attend college, all at the same time. Otherwise, lazy summer days were spent filling out forms and vacations were only an excuse to visit every campus we passed by. Now, a year later, we have all chosen our colleges and are getting ready to leave the nest. However, there were a lot of feelings, events, lessons, failures, and victories sandwiched between and when our searches ended - and not only for my siblings and I, but for our parents as well. So, a few nights ago, I decided to ask my father what he had learned during the course of the year. It turns out he learned a lot about himself, about us, and about the entire application process.

"One of the most surprising things to me was how receptive you all were and how well you absorbed information about the different options presented," says my father. He explained how he originally feared that all the tedious, business aspects of a college search would fly over our seventeen-year-old heads. He was startled to find that his children - and most teenagers - are actually very curious and willing to actively participate in the paperwork, the finances, and the "real-world" aspects of the search for a college.

"About two thirds of the way through, I realized, "Oh...this is working!"," My father continued. "You were all finding some good colleges and we were learning a lot." However, he says even though he was stressed from the very outset of the search, he did not fully appreciate how stressful it was for us - or other students - until something he refers to as "The Pennsylvania Meltdown" transpired. "Pennsylvania is littered with colleges," he chuckled, "and we tried to see every one of them on our way back from Maine." This meant a three-day-long, exhaustive haul down the east coast with five people in a very small car. By the time we had reached Pennsylvania, we were all thoroughly sick of each other. "That's another thing I learned. It's best to leave some space in the college search between you and your teen."

My father says if there was any overarching lesson he took away from the experience, though, it was to never limit yourself in your college search. You never know what you might find. This also goes financially to some extent - there are so many ways to earn scholarships nowadays through the internet and a school you previously would have thought of as infeasible may very well be in your price range with grants and scholarships. Perhaps these lessons should be kept in mind for future experiences in life, and perhaps there will be many more to learn in the next four years to come.