thelastgirlonearth.blog

I know 1500 is just a number. 

I know that someone’s amazing score doesn’t determine my future, but then why does it feel like it threatens everything I’ve ever worked for? 

I wake up. 

I run. 

I shower. 

I get dressed for school.

I get an education. 

I go to dance rehearsal. 

I walk to the library. 

I get picked up. 

I shower. 

I study. 

I sleep. 

I feel like a drone. 

That’s the schedule, on weekends I am at home, then the library and occasionally, I’ll watch a movie with my mom. That’s how most of my days go. 

I spend my days studying and I’m exhausted. I want to sleep. I want to stop, but I can’t. Because I know that at my school there are hundreds of more kids like me who are studying all day, working for the future they want, but they do it better. 

All of us textbook zombies want to go to university. That’s the only reason why we live our teenage years like sleep-deprived drones, at least. 

Going to an academically competitive school allows you to challenge yourself to the max, that’s why I chose to go here. I had the choice to go to the school of happiness, but instead I decided to experience the last four years of my childhood never feeling like enough. 

It’s a humbling experience, being the best at your previous school but hardly being able to keep up at your new one. 

I look at my day, and it feels mechanical. 

I am a chunk of metal that’s starting to rust. I need someone to oil me. 

I am tired and cannot move. I don’t want to. I want to stay in bed. I want to dream without worrying about shoving another AP in, another honors course, more extracurriculars, college applications, and just my future. 

I do try my best to do whatever I know I can handle. But when my sophomore schedule looks like two APs waiting to pound me, others’ are 4 AP level classes waiting to be labeled with a big fat 4 or 5. 

Freshman year, no APs. I thought it was fine. 

Just do whatever you can handle. 

Most kids are already taking 2-3. I try to convince myself that it’s fine. 

Everyone has their own pace, and it’s not like I can’t catch up. Maybe they’re doing less extracurriculars than me. 

It’s not fine.

“Everyone has their own individual qualities to bring to a campus…Don’t try to fit in every extracurricular…Colleges care more about the person, not the transcript…”

I am no university administrator but that sounds just like a bunch of counselors B.S. 

I hope they’re right, I really do. It’s hard to be hopeful when surrounded by kids with a 4.0 and a calculator somehow implanted into their brain. 

I have this dream, well more of an image, that when I go to university I am going to find myself. I am going to go somewhere on the East Coast, preferably Connecticut and experience a non-southern Californian autumn. I will write for the school paper, run on crunchy leaves, and be able to layer without sweating. 

University will be my time to shine, at least in the image I’ve been building in my head. 

I bet hundreds of thousands of other kids my age are thinking the same thing. 

Working this hard for a dream that may never even come true is scary, but what scares me even more is not utilizing what I can to give me the best possible chance of this outcome. Or else, it would be like I did that to myself. 

I’d spend my days wondering if I could’ve taken another AP, joined another club, started another non-profit, hired that tutor, not gone out that night with my friends, maybe it could’ve all turned out differently. 

I don’t want to spend what will feel like forever just wishing I did something different. 

I want to put all my heart into it, but I can’t. Because the heart eventually stops. 

But a chunk of metal never does. 

Even when it’s starting to rust.