It’s your senior year.

Congrats!

You’re tired

You’re stressed

You have a strong case of Senioritis (It can even happen before senior year trust me)

And you’re probably starting to apply and get accepted to colleges

Is this you?

Here is the scenario:

You’re staring at your computer screen, multiple tabs open, transcripts in hand, trying to listen to a calming Spotify station, all while typing the same things over and over again:

What is your major of interest?

What are your SAT/ACT scores?

What’s your GPA?

Are you smarter than a 5th grader? (basically)

Then weeks later, or months, you would maybe get a letter in the mail saying "YAY" or "NAH"

It’s a scary process, and here is why.

In high school, our counselors and even some of our teachers have pounded into our heads that if you don’t have a PERFECT GPA or PERFECT SAT/ACT scores or you don’t do enough activities, that you will NEVER get into college.

That is not the case

Listen to me, a college student.

Granted, I’m only a first year college student who hasn’t even made it through her first semester yet

But I can tell you this

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

Yes, you have to do generally well in school and if you fail out or have all F’s there is a high possibility you will not get into Harvard.

But there are other places.

Colleges want you to move farther into your education.

They want you to excel toward what you want to do and they want you to get out of the immaturity of high school and push you towards the career you have always dreamed of.

So many of you are stressing over your SAT scores and how high your GPA is,

Trust me, I was too.

I was convinced no school would ever accept me, especially not a big school like Ball State.

I mean, I had an average SAT score with an average GPA, but all my other peers seemed to go above and beyond me.

It was after I got my acceptance letter that I realized being “average” didn’t matter.

Now, I’m not saying grades and tests aren’t important, because they are!

However, they aren’t as important as you think they are.

It is pounded into our heads that you MUST be above and beyond to be extraordinary and make a difference in this world.

FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE

Let me tell you right now

If you want to be a doctor?

Work your ass off to be a doctor.

If you want to be a teacher?

Work your ass off to be a teacher.

If you want to be a garbage man?

WORK YOUR ASS OFF TO BE A GARBAGE MAN.

If you show that you are working your hardest and that you are striving towards a higher education, then you will be accepted and you WILL go to college.

Don’t ever tell yourself that you aren’t “college material.”

Everyone is college material if they want to be.

Everyone can go to college if they want to.

If you don’t want to go to college, that’s fine too.

Educators WANT you to thrive and they WANT you to learn and they WANTyou to pursue a career you love.

Don’t listen to the people who say you can’t go to college because you didn’t score well enough.

Don’t listen to the people who think what you want to major in is not beneficial.

I’ve been told,

“The world has enough teachers, but what they don’t have enough of is doctors! Go be a doctor.”

Do you think I caved to what others wanted me to do?

NO!

Instead I turned around, arrived at school fully intent on leaving as a certified educator.

It’s not about what others want for you.

It’s what YOU want for you.

It gets better.

I’m not gonna say it gets easier, because education is never “easy.”

You have to work just as hard, if not harder, in college, because now you are working towards something so much greater than to just get an A on that art project or to score the highest in the class on your chemistry test.

But please, stop getting so worked up over not getting the highest score on the SAT.

Please stop telling yourself you’ll never get into college, or that you’ll never get into the college of your dreams.

I’m not Harvard material, this I know, but I have proven to be Ball State material, and that was enough for me.

I’m telling you all this right now, once you have stepped for the first time onto your campus as an official college student….

It’s like a breath of fresh air.

Love,

A former High School Senior