Jerry Fan

A graphic illustrating the two perceived sides and seasons of college applications, created using PowerPoint.

December. I’m staring at a blank Word document. The cursor blinks tauntingly.

It’s dark outside, and the oppressive cold creeps in. The clock inches toward midnight. My cursor stays put.

I started writing sometime in September. This must have been at least my fifth night staying up to try to get something — anything — on paper.

It’s funny how college applications seem to be one of the few topics that almost every senior at CVHS thinks about. Everything else fades away. One by one, activities are dropped as walls — constructed of impeccable imagery and magnificent metaphors — get put up to make time for writing essays. I can barely carve some time out, usually in the form of late nights like tonight.

In the halls and classrooms alike, conversation chills to a whisper. People keep to themselves, not wanting to share anything too revealing about their application. It would be a shame to be scooped, after all. Only a few people keep me company as I spew off midnight ramblings that might see the light of day as finished compositions. Might as well type it down anyway.

There’s a sort of existential fear that lingers in the air every time I open a document related to college. Knowing everything that I say now could determine my future — it’s scary. I’m not even 18, yet I’m expected to somehow summarize my whole life story in a neatly packaged PDF for admission committees to read. It doesn’t help that the final decision is ultimately out of my control.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get started. It’s past midnight already, and I can still see the top margin of the page. There’s no end in sight — for this essay and for the college application season.

And yet, time marches on.

Progress starts slow, but it’s steady. As words slowly fill up a page or two, some of my essays start to hit their mandated word counts. Some days are productive, but others not so much.

Stress comes and goes in transient spikes as deadlines continue to loom over me like a lurking, imminent threat. When winter break arrives, college applications are practically the only thing in my mind.

The first week of winter break was probably the roughest. No more schoolwork to use as an excuse to put off writing the dreaded essays. Any hard-fought optimism is quickly wiped out by the endless days and nights, fully dedicated toward the laborious task of writing.

But in due time, the new year arrives. The days start to get longer as the occasional sunny day invites temperate breezes to take the place of the frigid, midnight air.

I submit an application. The Common App website celebrates my accomplishment with digital confetti. It’s kind of nice.

A few late-night sessions later, I follow suit by sending two more applications off to the digital ether. Soon enough, as I hand in my last outstanding application, I finally close out of my Word documents. Thousands of words later, the cursor finally stops blinking.

February comes and goes. My applications return to me in the form of decisions, rolling in over a few weeks in March. By April, I make my own decision on where to go.

It’s final. College application season is over for me.

It’s been months since my last late-night essay writing session. I don’t really miss staring at a blank sheet of paper as my eyes struggle to stay open. But those nights spent with Word documents were kind of special.

Having spent the better part of four years here at CVHS, I’ve done a lot of things in my high school career. College applications gave me a chance to recognize that. Those nights I spent starting at a blank document were also nights I spent walking down memory lane.

One night I would revisit the very first club I joined. The next, I would feel the mix of adrenaline and euphoria surge through me as I won a specific award at a competition on a date I had long forgotten.

As much as I have enjoyed what my senior year has to offer, it simply would not be the same if I had not gone through the gauntlet of college applications. They gave my year meaning and closure. Without essay prompts for to reflect on and some “capstone” essays to stress about, my time at CVHS would have just come to an unceremonious end.

It would be a lie to say that it’s fun to write college applications. But it would also be a lie to merely call them a means to an end. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

You’ll have your own endless winter and sleepless nights. You’ll have your own cursor to taunt you. But when you reopen that Word document in the future, months after college application season ended, you’ll smile.

It was all worth it in the end.