29 Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

Lesson 10

In my defense, being a senior is stressful. There are SAT’s to take, Common App to set up, and of course LOADS of paperwork to fill out with each college application. It’s a tedious and boring task.

Luckily for me, there were only two colleges I was interested in applying to. Roger Williams University and Gordon College. I was very excited about both schools and applied Early Application for both.  By the end of September I had all my college applications in and was finally able to sit back and rest.

NOT

See the thing that stinks about colleges in general is that they always take forever to get back to you. It’s not enough that they make you labor over paperwork endlessly for days on end, then you have to wait FOREVER to hear back whether your paperwork was good enough or not. It starts like this.

You have to take the SAT a super hard test that will pretty much determine whether or not you’re getting into college. It’s a four hour test and by the end of it you’re exhausted and just want to go home and relax. But.. SIKE! You can’t relax because you have to spend the next 8-12 weeks waiting to see if you did well enough. Good luck sleeping tonight!

Then, you have to apply to colleges. After filling out extravagant amounts of paperwork which include pointless questions such as “What kind of white are you?” and “What grade will your youngest sibling be in by the time you graduate?” You finally are able to send in your application.

But hold your horses! You aren’t even to the “Waiting to hear if you’re accepted or not” part yet. First, you have to wait 3-9 days to hear if your application was even received and complete. Then you get to wait.

And wait,

And wait,

And wait,

For 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks, 7 weeks, 8 weeks, and then MAYBE you’ll get a reply by then. If not, the waiting continues. It’s a painful, painful, game. But I digress.

Anyway, I was on my 8th week of waiting.

I had received an acceptance letter from Gordon College, but still had no word from Roger Williams University.

 According to the paper I had received in the mail, I was supposed to receive an acceptance or rejection letter anytime in the next couple days. I was extremely on edge.

Three days past the date they had given and I had still not received the letter yet. I checked the mailbox several times each day feeling more and more nauseous with each passing hour.

“Don’t worry about it.” My mom reassured me, “I’m sure they just haven’t sent it out yet.”

I nodded but didn’t really pay attention to what she was saying.

That day as I walked into swim practice I wasn’t really there, I was really worried about why I hadn’t received word yet and it was starting to really bother me.

As I walked onto the pool deck, my swim coach stopped me.

A side note about my swim coach: he also works at RWU.

“Could you come into my office?” He asked.

I nodded while thoughts raced through my head of all the things I had done at practice in the last couple days. Had I done something bad? Broken anything?

I walked in behind him and he sat down in his chair at his desk.

Have a seat he said, motioning to the coach facing his desk.

I sat down nervously.

“What’s your phone number?” he asked.

I blinked, this wasn’t what I was expecting.

“ummm,” I scrambled around in my brain trying to think of the numbers

“302-553-6784” I said

“Mmmhmmm” he nodded, “Here it says that your number is 302-553-6783”

“Oh” was my intelligent reply.

“So,” he continued “Are you still interested in RWU?”

I nodded

“Well,” he smiled, “Congratulations you’re accepted!”

My heart pitter-pattered loudly in my chest “Really” I asked hoping he wasn’t teasing me

“Yep.” He smiled, “The admissions department gave me your number to tell you the good news, and I called. A girl answered the phone and it sounded like you so I said ‘congratulations you’re accepted!’ but then she said ‘I didn’t apply’ and I realized that this was the wrong number.”

“Oops” I smiled sheepishly

Lesson learned: Waiting is hard, but getting ahold of someone when you have their wrong number, is harder.