As I sit down in front of my computer looking at my university applications, I begin to cry. I feel this way not because I feel I won’t get into any school- well that maybe is a part of it- it’s because I feel so unlike myself as I read my college application answers.
When I was applying to boarding schools, I played the regular application game. I collected information on each school I was applying to and tailored my application- with the help of a paid for advisor- to the school. I presented “my best self”. In the interviews I felt dirty.
I felt so unreal putting on this persona, which wasn’t necessarily an act because I wasn’t lying on my application, but it felt like a performance for people, whom I don’t know nor care about. I love economics and so I read many books on the subject, but I caught myself during this period choosing an economics book that would look good on my application. I told my aunty about it, that it would look good, and there was so much disappointment in her eyes that I realized what I was turning into.
I was becoming a college application and not an actual person with their own passions. I was turning my human experience into a 500 word essay and this, as I sit down now in front of another essay I need to write, eats at me.
Throughout my school life, multiple people, multiple times, have told me to do a sport because it makes me a well-rounded applicant for universities. I tell them I understand, but every time it happens, I want more actually to not do it, because I refuse to change myself for a school.
But I feel myself caving now. Again I am in a cycle. I have started a substack called Changing Economics because I want to speak about things I like. But in the back of my mind, as the application deadline looms, I think of how it can show my passion for politics and economics to a university. I joined the Student Parliament to add value to my school community, but I now think of rushing my initiatives to meet the college application deadline. I put off reading, I put off yoga, I put off me, to a write a college essay, to perform, like an actor, my life’s story to a college admission’s officer. I have no time to do anything except do something for college and it is all killing me. It is choking me and I feel my passion dying. It makes me not want to go to university at all.
My friend told me of a story of a boy who loves coding, but for college his school is forcing him to make a capstone out of it and now he sees it as a chore, similar to how I do with economics at times. Another girl I know started a non-profit foundation, something that should be started because of a deep passion for helping others. She admits that she only did it for college- she admits that she is not being true. My friend in grade 9 is planning her entire school life on getting an IVY League: every action, every initiative, every course, every grade. None of it, to me, feels like living for the purpose of the moment. No longer can we choose courses that expand our horizons: people look at how well they will do because they know the grade matters most. I look at my friends in 12th grade and wonder if they feel fulfilled by their lives, if they feel purpose in their lives, if they feel any happiness in their lives and I see no evidence in their tired eyes.
What are we creating with these applications, if our supposed future world leaders don’t even like what they do? Who are we looking for at universities if people are forced to manufacture passion, and don’t live their authentic self. How I am supposed to grow as my own person, if I have to shove myself into a box to please an institution. My teacher tells me at his university, his professors treated him as a number but honestly if I am not myself, I guess that’s what I am.
The university application process, in my opinion, kills passion at its core, because it doesn’t call for passion, it calls for the perfect applicant and I honestly am not and I refuse to be. Highschool is a place to grow and be free. It is a place to find yourself because when you are older, you can’t: you have to get a job that pays enough to cover your bills. And honestly, I cannot find myself in the well-rounded perfect applicant for Harvard or Stanford or Oxford, so I will live my truth. I won’t play sports, I’ll do my own volunteer work, and I’ll write my own essay and i’ll believe the value of my true self.
Still though, when I sent this article to one of my teachers for review, he gave me his own story.
When he was my age, he wanted to be his true self too but as he got older, he was hit by reality. If he wanted to work as a teacher at my school, he had to present himself in a certain way, even if it wasn’t his most authentic self. He says this is something everyone must do to participate in society in some way. Unless you are trying to remake society or opt out of society, then this is the negotiation of life, and it is your ability to negotiate this that will determine your happiness. But he still adds “but if you are brave enough to opt out of society or remake society, then all the power to you!”
And this points to the real question of conversation. I have my way, I want to live my life; he has his way, he lives his.
How do you think you should live your life? What will you choose, or have to choose? Tell me in the comments.