Today I'm going to be peering into a few dark corners with a flashlight, bringing (hopefully) into light the stress that makes Wellesley so frustrating yet enticing at the same time.
First off, I just wanted to congratulate all you Regular Decisions applicants.
Congratulations!! You have successfully pulled all your transcripts, rec letters, essays, supplements, and whathaveyou together for the January 15th deadline.
I was a regular decision applicant and thank goodness THAT is over with. Sure, I still have to send in the FAFSA deadline, but I would never, ever, ever put myself through all those sleepless nights after submitting the applications, wondering whether all the essays and such actually reached the various offices of admissions. Now that I work in our office of admissions, though, I am on the receiving side of the brunt of the thousands of applications that flood us. And that keeps me constantly busy, at least until next Tuesday, when I re-start school and all the associated stresses. Which brings me back to my topic: stress.
I'm going to be frank with you here. I know that there is a general occurrence (happening among many different colleges!) of smoothing over the amount of stress permeating the college atmosphere. Well, here goes: Wellesley may have a lovely campus, wonderful professors– but a whole lot of stress to boot.
[nom nom nom in Denmark over last summer!]
Here's an example of the stress: You sit down with your breakfast food, mildly chewing away in November only to hear a couple of girls a table over discussing their internships and research positions for the summer. And no, I'm not talking about the past summer– I'm talking about the upcoming summer. Sure, it might be cute if they were only speaking of possible things, but when those students are discussing some opportunities they have ALREADY SNAGGED, that just makes me depressed.
And yes, I do confess that I am one of those students, but unlike those girls, I am still in limbo about what exactly I should do over the summer. I'm currently planning to enter graduate school and work in psychology, and subsequently, I need a whole lot of psychology research to be on my resume. On the other hand, I have a once-in-a-number-of-years opportunity to visit my family in Syria.. Academics? Or 'pleasure'? I know that the typical Wellesley Woman would choose academics, but what do I want? That's a question that can't be neatly answered in a blog post. Stay tuned to whether I decide to break the mold.