How Colleges and Unniversities are Teaching a Harsh Lesson of Reality

At the end of our junior year in high school, the majority of us are excited to finally embark on our last year of high school. However, our ambitions and goals vary from person to person, one of the most important being to go on to a higher form of education, which is college. In our day and age, getting into a college is highly competetive, and standing out in order to get accepted is difficult when there are likely thousands of other students applying to the same schools that you are. The likely answer would to gain both education and experience by taking difficult classes (such as AP or honors), which display to colleges that one is both responsible and capable of taking on an education at a college or university level. On the otherhand, a schedule such as this could be overwhelming for a senior, especially after already spending twelve years in school, and only having a few months before graduation. Senior year is a person's life when they are stuck between their childhood and becoming an adult, and many would choose to still behave like a child while still getting rewarded like an adult. Colleges have caught onto this pattern, and fairly teach them a lesson that the choices you make have consequences that can cost you much more than they ever did in your childhood.

The term often used as "senioritis" is far from just a myth for the majority of seniors. It's difficult to balance our dreams of what a high school year should be like, mainly because in movies, the last year in high school year is depicted is being effortless and very enjoyable. Seniors often apply to colleges with a list of challenging classes in order to impress them and gain their attention, however many of them either drop out of the class or fail out after the college had already sent them a letter of acceptance. Does this mean that the student is accepted anyways? Most colleges would say "no", and that the student did not prove what he/she had promised, which means that he/she doesn't get what the college had promised. To begin, students that are willing to let their grades drop in high school are more likely to do the same while they are in college, and it would be foolish of a college to waste their time on a student that would eventually just become a drop-out. A higher education is both expensive and not available to everyone, and there is always someone more prefereable to take that person's place. Furthermore, a letter of acceptance isn't valid until the high school diploma has been earned, so if a student had failed a class that was necessary to graduate, but had already been accepted into a university, that acceptance would be invalid.

The reality that teenagers try to ignore is that their childhood is coming to a slow end, and that along with their approaching adulthood comes an obligation to work harder, not only to succeed, but to survive in general. In reality, now choosing between school work or friends is the difference between choosing a life of minimum wage or a life guided by a higher education, which entitles a more stable, higher-paying career after receiving a diploma. After living through a recession, it's evident that a high school diploma alone is not enough to sustain a life above the poverty level, and colleges are more crowded that ever because of this. Although is may be preferable to take the easy way out, no one will ever be able to realize the amount of intelligence or experience someone has if that person were to never reach out to succeed. For example, we can examine an person that takes part in a sport (such as track) and is physically in shape, but doesn't apply themself by practicing like the rest of their teammates do. It is highly unlikely that he/she would be able to prosper by talent, rather than relying on their gains they received from practicing (such as a better endurance, lower body fat, etc.). Relatively, the same would apply on an educational level, for students that have always done the "bare minimum" just to progress towards their high school diploma. It is now that our organizational skills, priorities, and acts of taking initiative shine over the numerous people that only have intelligence but lack ambition.

In conclusion, the act of colleges revoking letters of acceptance after students let their grades fall in their senior year is just an act of showing the true, bitter ways of the world. In our senior year, it is key to not only rely on knowledge, but to put forth effort and make decisions that we never had to necessarily make before, such as choosing between good grades and leisure time. Colleges would rather accept a student that displays both ambition and a potential for growth, because more often that not, these are the people that succeed in our society. Although there an idead that during our senior year, we need to enjoy ourselves as much as possible before we graduate, the fact of the matter is that this is the time when we need to try our hardest in order to prepare ourselves for our future that lies less than a year ahead of us. If colleges were to allow us to slack off during this crucial time in our life,it would not only teach us a lesson that is detrimental to everything we have learned and predicted that college would be like, but it would set an example that our entire adult life would be that way. This is nothing less than far from the truth, and by making us work hard during our senior year, colleges teach us our first lesson of the real world: that the actions we make as adults have real consequences.

Aspirations for My Senior Year

After spending twelve years (eleven if you don't include pre-school) of my life dedicating 180 days of each year towards school and my education, all of my efforts are finally starting to show it's product. In less than one year, I'll be crossing the stage along with many of my peers that I have grown up with, and have changed with throughout the years. We all have one thing in common, which is that none of us have lost sight of earning one of the most important achievements there is to earn in these days: a high school diploma. I suppose not all of us haven't followed a perfect route to this goal, but I think that's one thing that has really made each one of us original and unique. It's amazing to see how much each one of us have progressed so much from the young freshmen we once were, including myself. I remember first starting here at SSFHS and having little to no aspirations or plans for my futures, which was odd because I had done exceptionally well in middle school (I promoted with a 4.0 throughout the entire three years I was there). Perhaps it was mainly the people I surrounded myself with that made this effect on me, none of them really had the ambition or motivation to do well in school, and even today, very view are doing well with it, if they are even still in school at all.

This is the year that I'm finally taking initiative and setting the bar high in order to reach my dream career (I hope to either work in the medical-anthropology field or something along the lines of being a teen-doctor). However, from the end of my freshman year up until now, I have been progressing to the choices that I am now making this year. I decided to take two AP classes (calculus and biology), and to focus more on what I can do to help my community (along with that, trying to find ways to help the world as a whole). I've always had a more "radical" approach on different topics, such as feminism, animal rights, racial equality, etc. and I've been trying my best to share my views with the rest of the world. From the time when I first started making realizations about "the way things are" and began determining my ethics, I mainly alienated myself from the things I viewed as "wrong", rather than trying to find ways to stop it. This year, and I hope to continue with this for the rest of my life, I'm striving to bring awareness to these topics and inform others in ways they can stop bullying, harassing, or creating a prejudice/stereotype. What many teens don't understand is that there are really simple things that they can change in their life/lifestyle that could create much less harm than they currently are (such as their vocabulary, for example, using racial/sexual slurs). I often bring up these topics up in a casual way with my friends/peers, and most of them are able to see things from my point of view.

Furthermore, I've set a fitness/health goal for myself, that I've been continuing since the summer. It's really difficult to balance, school, exercise, and hanging out with friends, so I've mainly been participating in the first two. Lately, I've just been going to school and working out on the weekdays, and volunteering at the library and working out on the weekends. It's probably not something that most people would look forward to, but for the most part, I enjoy what I am doing right now, and I know that there are many good rewards to come from working hard. I usually spend my leisure time going to "shows", which are somewhat like concerts, but on a much smaller scale, and involve underground music. I'm laughed right now while re-reading the beginning of this paragraph and realized that the quote "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" has really defined my lifestyle right now, and it's hard to argue that I don't feel stressed out often. Going to shows is my catharsis, and I think it balances out all the stress I'm embedded in throughout the school-week.