College Sucks

I recently had the pleasure of receiving an email from Tufts University. I applied there Early Decision on November first and then spent a month hoping I would be accepted. Decisions were sent out on Friday the 13, which I have now decided is the luckiest day ever because I got in!

I found out in the Five Guys in Nashua while sipping on my milkshake after swim practice. Needless to say, I was very excited. It feels so good to be completely done. All I have to do is make it through the rest of the year without failing all of my classes. Easy right? Just don’t get a D in calculus and I’ll be fine. Incorrect.

I also need to apply for as many scholarships as possible because college is expensive and I barely have enough money to pay for gas every few weeks.

The guidance website is slightly helpful, but you need to do a lot of the searching yourself. And even if you do find one that works for you, sometimes the website is sketchy, or they make you create an account. Like no thank you, please let me just write an essay and win a contest. Don’t send me three million emails I don’t care about. And it wouldn’t be bad if only one or two made me make an account, because then I could just delete the account when I was done. No. Most of the ones that are for more than $1,000 wanted me to make an account. I do not have the mental capacity to remember all of the scholarships I apply for and delete my accounts, so I must resign myself to either being crushed by spam emails or being crushed by debt.

I know which one I would choose, but still. I thought the spam emails would be done once you applied for college. I’ve received college emails for two years, I don’t need anymore emails about things I don’t care about.

Anyway, the title of this is “College Sucks”, but really I have no way of knowing that because I am most definitely not at college yet. However, I believe that people should be able to educate themselves without paying schools $70,000 a year. I’m sorry, but with $280,000 I could purchase a small condo and a car. And in the future if traveling to the moon was something people did regularly, I could probably do that like three times.

Besides, now with an undergraduate degree you can’t really do much. Especially in science or math. (tragically I am studying chemistry) So you have to go to graduate school. Which is even more money.

Now I know with inflation and all, costs of things will go up. But I feel like it’s gotten a little bit out of hand.

The whole system seems a little crazy. First I had to basically sell my soul to the college board when I turned sixteen. Now I’m becoming a willing slave to Tufts, a privilege that I’m going to pay a small fortune for, and I’m not even allowed to vote yet. I will be eighteen when I zip off to college, but I had to make the choice to apply ED while I was still seventeen. Who’s idea was it to be like “hmm, they aren’t consenting adults, but lets make them sell their souls and agree to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education. This is a smart choice.”

I’m pretty sure I will be fine. And I think I’m only freaking out because it’s just starting to sink in now. Once I have a little bit of time to talk about money with my parents and grandparents we will find a way to make it out. I might try to finesse some money from the my grandfather who #abandoned the family.

Also, this may be kind of mean, but this other person in the grade also applied to Tufts, but they didn’t get in. I got immense satisfaction from this because this person and I are not fond of each other. When I say “immense satisfaction” I mean Josh Booth, Maddie Donahue and I jumped for joy when we found out. We were just in my room screaming “this person” didn’t get in while jumping for two minutes.

I feel kind of bad because I think Tufts was the person’s top choice, but also if I hadn’t gotten in and they had I would have murdered something.

That is all for now. I must now go deal with my conflicting emotions of excitement and fear 🙂