I am a senior who unfortunately doesn’t have interests that push me closer to being set in the life I want for my future.
Just like every other senior planning on attending college next fall, I am busy applying to schools and scholarships in my free time.
I work a part-time job for about 16 hours each week, I go to regular appointments, I drive myself to and from school, and I take my grandpa to the bank once a month.
This is a new level of busy for me.
When I got my first job the summer of my junior year, it was very bearable because I didn’t have school or anything extracurricular going on to work around.
Now I work so much that even when I have just a four- or five-hour shift at the pizza joint that employs me, my whole day becomes centered on it.
Sometimes I can’t do anything more that day if I’m working, because it takes so much out of me.
I enjoy my job, but I am on my feet nonstop in a very high-paced environment with food, really hot ovens, and a lot of people crammed in a very small place.
On top of that, the noise of all kinds of different people doing all kinds of different things can really cause me to lose focus or just get annoyed.
Surprisingly, I don’t have trouble getting things done at work – afterall, I’m getting paid – but it’s not fun telling my colleague for a seventh time to stop singing for the love of all that is good in the world.
Since I have a regular work schedule and other things to do, thinking about college tends to fall way down on my priority list most days.
When I get off work, I just don’t have it in me to jump right on those scholarship applications. I need time to take care of myself before I go to bed. I shower every night, and go to sleep by 10:30.
The pressures of college and the future started weighing on me pretty heavily toward the end of my junior year.
I’m not an athlete, so I won’t be getting any scholarships for that.
I’m not involved in performing arts, so no scholarships there either.
The only real thing I have had going for me is my very late involvement in the school magazine and maybe my passion for pottery.
My parents knew this, and started pressing me about things that I could possibly get involved in to help me through the college process.
It got to the point where, any time college was mentioned, it was really easy for me to get overwhelmed and do something else to avoid having to think about my big dreams and how I might not achieve them because of the way my high school career has gone.
The problem for me comes when I actually try working on important things like applications and homework but it doesn’t really interest me. If I don’t find interest in something, it’s almost like my brain completely tunes it out and focuses on something else.
It lands me in a difficult situation, because I know I should be paying attention and working hard on these things, but my brain would rather focus on anything else so much more that it’s like I can’t even comprehend what I’m looking at.
I first started to notice this when, in class last year, I found myself in this seemingly endless cycle of: “I can’t understand anything, and I’m wasting my own time just thinking about how I can’t understand it.”
I only felt this way when it came to understanding something that other people seemed to already grasp, and I would just stop trying once I felt I wasn’t up to speed with everyone else.
The confusion at the situation only wastes more of my time, so I try my best to stop that cycle of mental turmoil.
Sometimes I take a break and come back to it later, or do something that doesn’t make me feel stupid.
I know everyone sometimes feels stupid, but when I look around a classroom and see other people paying attention while I think about what I’m going to eat for dinner, I get discouraged that I’m not doing enough like other people.
Maybe my skill in life can be listening to music, or watching movies, or cleaning a dirty kitchen, or writing about everything I have ever done in my life and how it made me feel.
That’s what I’m good at.
Unfortunately none of those things are “useful” to the people deciding scholarships.
