It’s been a brutal week in SwitchedOn Land. The situation in Haiti–aside from being horrific to witness at a distance–has had me working like a fiend. Hence the blog neglect. M.’s hard drive died. Again. And Husband Dear has been racing to complete our taxes for financial aid forms, always a sobering exercise.
Meanwhile, C.’s first semester finals started on Friday, which was also the deadline for applications to boarding schools. Child was simply not getting enough sleep and by Thursday night she was running on fumes. She had been working on her essays since December; thinking about them even longer. “Describe your favorite place.” “What is your favorite quality about yourself?” “Describe a situation where you overcame your assumptions, biases and prejudices.” “Tell us about an activity you’re passionate about.” And on and on… and on. At least a dozen in all. Not easy. I had been seeing drafts, but pretty much staying “hands off.” However at 9:30 p.m. I discovered that the 500-word essay she had written for what I thought was one purpose, was in fact framed in a very different way, to be a personal essay. There was no way she could submit what she wrote. She had written all about Africa and aid policy, completely missing the “personal” part. When I told her she couldn’t submit it as is, she lost it. “Why should I bare my soul to some stranger?!” she wailed. Not only was she exhausted, but she still had to hand copy several of her essays onto the forms in addition to submitting them in typed form. (Why? Why?)
On the one hand I wanted do nothing more than to hug her, make her a cup of Sleepytime tea, tuck her in and tell her to deal with it in the morning. On the other hand, there was no “morning” — she had to be on the bus at 6:30 a.m., prepared for her exams (the two subjects where her A’s are teetering on a knife’s edge and she “has to” (her words) get A’s.) and the applications had to be finished. I was kind of dumbfounded. After having months to do this, how in the HELL had it come to this last minute juncture?
But as she wrote in one of her essays, tenacity is her best quality, that she will get it done no matter what. And she did. She scrapped the Africa essay and in amazingly short order whipped out an essay about Nancy Drew (“Describe a fictional character and how that character relates to you.”) Good ol’ Nancy. Always comes through in a clutch.
By Friday the essays were proofread and copied, the forms signed, the envelopes sealed, exams studied for.
Tenacity.
Ah, sweet weekend.
That is tenacity. I never had it. My spouse has it in spades. I hope that it gets her her As and her acceptances.
Thanks for the good wishes, Kirsten!
I hate to bring up unpleasant thoughts, but now imagine what Junior year and college app seasons will be like. She’s hit the tip of the iceberg. For example, if she applies to TASP for the summer next year, she gets to write 4 1500 word essays while dealing with the workload of her junior year. On the one hand, essays that are actually interesting to write are fun. On the other hand, sleep is a positive thing. The point being high school has reached insanity level and no one running anything seems interested in fixing it.
Best of luck surviving this year so you can do it again next year! >.<
Actually Perp, I haven’t even shared all that she’s had going on. But yes, I get it… more than you know. I take it you’re applying to TASP? If so, good luck!
I have had a similar experience where I had to write an essay and, even worse, several pages of quotation analysis in about a week, coming down to a Saturday crunch spent entirely on the computer typing. Nightmare. Also, writing the rough draft of the IDRP had me pulling an all-nighter – see my recent post about what that is, there isn’t room here for me to elaborate.
One thing that worked for me during high school applications: over winter break I was having lots of trouble getting going with my essays at the same time one of my friends (whose mom is close friends with my mom) was having the same trouble. For about a week and a half, I would get up, eat breakfast, and go over to my friend’s house while one mom would supervise us while we worked in 2 hour chunks (then race upstairs to play on the computer) until afternoon/dinner ish. The apps still weren’t easy but we both actually got them done, and we got to complain to each other about how hard they were and bounce ideas off each other. Misery loves company, and all that. And I applied to 8 schools, and am not that organized, so to finish them all in about a week and a half is pretty darn good for me.
Good luck with High school apps everyone; I hope college apps aren’t much worse…
P.S. don’t apply to 8 high schools. really. don’t. All the apps sucked and then after getting into a majority of them, deciding between them was very, very hard. most of the people in my class applied to around 4, maybe 5, and that’s about perfect.