It’s August, and for many high school seniors that means one thing: college application season has arrived.
Take it from someone who’s been there: in another couple of months you’ll be able to recite the places you’re applying faster than the names of your immediate family and you’ll forget there was ever a time before the alphabet soup of entrance exams and financial aid forms.
Oh, and you’ll probably have enough free college mailings that you could toss them in your fireplace and heat your house for an entire year.
I could clutter your minds with the usual advice – be yourself, play up your passions, pick schools you like, not the ones you think make you look good – but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before.
And if you haven’t, believe me when I say that your parents, guidance counselors, and every Princeton Review book ever published are lurking just over the horizon waiting to tell you.
Anyway, for me the biggest lesson about college hasn’t been what I’ve learned from it. It’s what I haven’t.
During my senior year of high school, I saw college as the light at the end of a particularly essay-cluttered tunnel. Nirvana. Heaven. Chipotle on free burrito day. Whatever you’d call paradise, that was how I envisioned it.
In many ways, my first year met those expectations. I was surrounded by bright kids and brilliant professors. For fun I enrolled in classes with bizarre titles like “The Biology of Dinosaurs” and joined the staff of the literary magazine. I made friends and went on a few dates. In the self-contained college universe, things were looking pretty good.
Then the school year ended. Instead of going home, I headed for eastern Kentucky and an internship at a media nonprofit. There, as I struggled to make myself useful, I made a startling discovery, one that my college education certainly had not prepared me for.
I have no practical skills.
I can’t make databases or websites. I don’t know how to write press releases or organize anything. Give me 48 hours and access to the internet and I’ll churn out a half-decent essay on any number of subjects – history, literature, political science.
I can distill textbook chapters into neat pages of notes or memorize hundreds of vocabulary words. But put me in front of a fax machine and I’m lost.
In fact, most of my practically applicable knowledge, like how to file my taxes, I learned because of my high school job as a cashier at a drug store.
So why am I telling you all of this? Quite frankly, I wish someone had let me know during my senior year of high school that more school wasn’t my only option.
I heard the term ‘gap year” tossed around and knew some kids who took time off. But for most of us, college seemed like the only sure bet. After all, being in school is pretty much all we know.
I wish someone had reminded me that there’s nothing wrong with taking time off to figure out what you want and learn things you never could in school. In fact sometimes it’s the most mature choice you can make for yourself.
My friends who have taken time off say they appreciate school now more than they ever did when they knew no alternative. And think of the cool things you could do with a free semester or year, like hold down a full time job or learn a new language or join Americorps.
And if you choose to go straight to college like I did, remember when picking a school that it’s not just about the academics. College offers a lot of opportunities to explore, without much pressure, lots of things that could turn into a career.
So write for the school newspaper. Join the debate team. Tutor kids at a local elementary school. Whatever interests you, try it out.
And as the big scary demon of college applications descends this fall, just remember there’s a whole world out there. And not all of it fits inside a classroom.
Ryan Brown grew up Denver and will be a junior this fall at Duke University in Durham, N.C., where she is a features writer for the student newspaper and co-editor of the undergraduate literary magazine.
