Apps and Introspection

So, the season of college applications is utterly upon us.

I suppose I should be happy that my parents are letting me apply to MIT EA (they are SUPER cool and all of their coolness cannot be contained within one parenthetical statement), but I can't bring myself to feel as happy as I should be, i.e. bouncing off the walls, screaming up and down, acting out all the trappings of excitedness short of being actually accepted (through a miracle). I guess it's because they wouldn't let me go there if I did get in. But the college application is about you, not your parents! The invisible audience/readership cries. Yes, yes, I keep hearing that. Ultimately, I get it that it's my decision (I will be a legal adult by that time, anyway), but it's just so difficult.

There's no use in thinking about that issue now, however. I don't even know if I'll be accepted to any of the schools on my list, much less MIT. So for now, I have to focus on the application itself, and try to paint the most honest picture of me that can be portrayed to the admissions committees of MIT and various other post-secondary schools.

Part of me is excited about this process, as I get to make many trips down memory lane and reminisce about days when life was seemingly simpler, and all I had to worry about was practicing enough piano. But sometimes, the pressure and stress block the lane and I sit there, unable to remember even one reason why I enjoyed elementary school so much (was there something about soup?).

I've got to let it go. I've also got to let go all the nasty jealousy monsters that have been popping up whenever I think or hear about my friends' accomplishments. I am extremely proud of them, and they are amazingly accomplished! But it all adds to my inferiority complex, and I feel like I won't be admitted to any college once they realize how many opportunities I squandered as a lazy freshman/sophomore/junior.

But we can never go backward, only forward (I am 99.999995% sure that this is a quote by someone, +/- 0.05% error). "We are never told what might have happened." (Now this is a real quote, by C.S. Lewis, one of the coolest writers ever, for his philosophy about stories and many, many other reasons.) The only possible way I can "atone" for missing out during my young life is to seize opportunities wisely in college and beyond, and look at everything with a critical and analytical eye, but trusting intangible qualities of life and God when I have exhausted everything in my power. And while I'm exhausting everything in my power.