It’s the third quarter of our senior year and most of us seniors don’t really know what we’re doing. There’s just so much to do and focus on. Applying for colleges, filling out the FAFSA, deciding over a gap year, and figuring out the costs of attending college are all decisions that are too important to make a flimsy choice on. The decision of whether or not to participate in the graduation ceremony has already been taken. However, every senior knows there are more mental hurdles waiting patiently, while we hectically strive to maneuver through them.

Pressure surrounds and consumes many of us. Many teachers talk about college throughout class and that reminds us of that long to do list we haven’t completely thought out yet or even worse have tried to ignore. Those deep thought inducing inquiries that keep us up at night are repeatedly placed back into our minds. I believe most seniors would agree that as time progresses the strength of those strenuous thoughts also increases.

Whether or not we plan to attend a higher education institution is a wildly different beast from the question some of us try to avoid, which is “How will we pay for it?.” Of course there are scholarships, but receiving one isn’t just finding one. We have to put effort into meeting the requirements to earn the scholarship.

Sure, some of us might not feel any tension, but I doubt any of us ponder about the future without feeling at least slightly anxious. We will finally stop being kids, teens, or young adults, and we will be fully accountable for ourselves. Some of us might have thought the time would never come or it was too far in the future to face the fact that we will be entering that famous realm we’ve been told about since elementary,”the real world.”