The buzz has begun again as it has every year, arriving with the changing leaves of the numerable deciduous trees on our campus: college applications. As an insider looking around, I’ve noticed the pressure mounting for quite some time; for about as long as we’ve been in high school. It’s a frightening process: trying to condense four years of your academic and extracurricular achievement on an 8 1/2x 11 sheet of paper; and even worse, trying to sum up your intellectual, personal, and social being in 500 words or less. Perhaps what makes us most nervous is the fact that we might not be who those college admissions officers want us to be, that maybe we’ve wasted our years in high school taking the wrong classes, joining the wrong sports, or focusing on the wrong subjects. There are countless things wrong with the application process- from the unbalanced emphasis of test scores over personality to the limitations we put on ourselves trying to be the “well-rounded” student we hope they’re looking for. It is in this twisted form of prostitution that we try to sell ourselves, wrapped up in the perfect package, ready and willing to be molded into the leaders of tomorrow. But what if we’re leaders now? What if all this talk about needing to be chosen is just another way of learning to choose ourselves over everything else; what if it’s about putting ourselves first, and not allowing a letter to determine just how worthy we are of greatness. Regardless of where you start, more important is the journey you take to end up where you want to be. College is just part of that journey, part of our never-ending quest to make a difference; and while it may change our lives, may alter our futures, may even change us as people, it is only as big and bad as we make it. College is like any other test- it can make us or break us. But it cannot measure how capable we are of fulfilling our potential. It’s alright if an admission’s officer doesn’t see it, as long as you do.