Instead of my college-searching experience being either scary or sweet, it was more like biting into an oddly shaped unwrapped sweet that your friend gave to you without any explanation, and finding it has a mellow sweetness to it but an odd texture.
Sure, I was afraid of paying for college. I was so afraid of taking out loans and using my parent’s money that I started having nightmares about my parents with hollowed out cheeks, eating tiny portions of plain white rice out of small cracked bowls in a rundown-version of my house. So yeah, I was QUITE terrified.
I was also afraid of meeting new people. My friend that came with me to check out Amherst College, who, thankfully, is the calmer of the two of us, basically had to tap me on the shoulder, and tell me, “Jenny, stop smiling, it’s scary.” Which later then turned into, “Stop glaring! People will think you’re weird.” I couldn’t help myself.
And then I bit into college, and it was good. All the other freshmen were nervous and shy like I was, and that just made meeting people easier once I got the first syllable out. As for money, the school was generous with their financial aid, and I had gotten one or two scholarships to help out. Because of that, I was less afraid of leaving home for school, since the financial aid was better than that of my other choices.
And then the odd texture hit when I sat in on a Philosophy class which made me think class was insanely difficult and I realized that planes gave me motion sickness. But these things didn’t take away from the overall college search. It was a given that I’d struggle with college classes, and the college essays would be a pain to deal with. I just talked about my concerns to my advisor and teachers and they’d help me with my essays. Well, they helped with the essays, not the fear of hard classes because they said what everybody else said, “You’ll be juuuust fiiiiine.” That did not and still does not help me. But it’s one of those things you just need to survive, like the first day of school, and eventually, it’ll get better because you realize almost everyone else is just as lost as you are…besides that one kid that always messes up the grading curve…which means you should be friends with them.