The college acceptance process has three main prongs of excitement. The first is sitting in front of your computer, heart racing, seeing confetti flying across your screen. You can finally breathe, seeing the words “congratulations” in front of your eyes. All of your hard work has paid off. The second is getting to post on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc, and letting it take off and spread to all of your long lost camp friends, relatives, and acquaintances. The third is the transformation of your bed into a college shrine.

In the weeks following your admission, walking into your house becomes a source of anticipation. Maybe this will be the day you find your room decked out in your college’s colors. As you are plotting and ordering away for your friends’ rooms, you are secretly wondering, is someone simultaneously doing this for me?  For the past few days, your friends have been slaving over your college bookstore website, and student-made tailgating and college apparel businesses, spending basically your college tuition on shirts, custom cakes, tapestries, and more.

It used to just be that you would get an envelope in the mail, and that was it. But look at what it’s morphed into. With this desire to be serenaded by your friends with gifts and social media posts only increases the stress and pressure for high school students to do well in school so that they can reach this point of success, not to mention having a huge celebration.

Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned. You don’t get into your first choice for a school, meaning the preparations that your friends have made was for nothing. What if your friends never decorate your bed? What if you walk into your room only to find an abyss of dirty laundry, the same way you left it that morning?  

Truthfully, things do eventually work out, even if it is not as you fantasized they would. The college you ultimately get into may be a great match for you, and you don’t need streamers or posts to prove or celebrate this accomplishment.