A Decision to Hold My Life On

The biggest thing on many of our minds these days is college. We all want to get there as fast as possible. Whether it be the person sitting at last Fridays pep rally just thinking that if they had to sit through another of those, they would have to shoot themselves, or the huge argument that you had with your mother this week. We have all realized that High School has nothing left to offer us. Home life is getting unbearable. Above all, we are ready to turn the page and venture to the next chapter in our lives.

So here I must begin to start writing it, make it official, insert it into the table of contents right after adolescence and high school.

COLLEGE

It all starts as a junior in high school, for some, including myself, even sophomore year with that first test we all take: PSAT. I hated that thing and didn't take again as a junior. But this test became an invitation for hundreds of colleges to add me to their mile long address book and start sending me junk asking me to go to their college. Le Moyne, Gannon, Geneseo, some random college in Guatemala. It's all so confusing and overwhelming, and as you look through all of the mailings, ou can't help but look at each one and wonder, is this where I will be in three years?

For the majority of the trees that came through my post box, they were trashed and never thought of again. However, I can't help but remember one particular mailing that I got from a college my sophomore year. It was from some little college in Pennsylvania and had it not been for their catch phrase, I would have never looked at them twice...A liberal arts college where 1,200 students with unusual combinations and interests excel. I have unusual combinations and I have unusual interests, why not?

Two years later now. I have a 32 ACT under my belt, AP Biology rules my life, and I don't have very many worries in the world. I have completed all of my college applications and now I just need to hear back from them. One particular sunny and cold winter day, I received a piece of mail from Allegheny college, the same one that caught my heart two years before. I had completed their "leadership application" and had been waiting for about a month. I had been accepted, not a big deal really, but the real story is that they had given me their highest scholarship. 60,000 dollars over 4 years of school, that's 15,000 dollars a year. I was ecstatic. This was a huge breakthrough in my college decision. Sure it didn't bring the price down to Stony Brook level, but it was now only a few thousand more a year to go to the place that I really felt I belonged.

So i think this is me closing the door. No more room for decision. I didn't care if it still costs me 20,000 dollars a year to go there, loans are a given. Allegheny College of Meadville Pennsylvania, watch out, Stacy is coming to stay.